Leading Research Firm Profiles Chiquita Brands Migration to Managed e-Mail Service
8/25/2008
SEATTLE, Wash., Aug. 25, 2008 - Azaleos® Corporation, the managed Microsoft Exchange services company, today announced that Gartner Inc. has profiled Chiquita Brands International and how it migrated its worldwide e-mail system to the Azaleos Managed Exchange Service. Chiquita, an international marketer, producer and distributor of fresh and value-added food products with annual revenue of $4.7 billion, consolidated its 4,000 e-mail accounts from Novell GroupWise and other platforms onto Azaleos services. The full report is available at www.azaleos.com from an easy link off of the homepage.
Chiquita was using Novell GroupWise for its messaging and collaboration needs. As a result of the 2006 acquisition of Fresh Express, Chiquita inherited 1,500 users of Microsoft Exchange. The company decided to standardize all of its users on one messaging platform and consolidate its infrastructure around a Microsoft system.
Chiquita had limited experience with Microsoft Exchange and did not want to add resources to plan the complex migration, and handle the platform’s on-going management and administration. In addition, the company was averse to the requirements and expense associated with a worldwide on-site Exchange deployment. “Given our highly distributed e-mail topology we ruled out hosting providers since international bandwidth constraints would limit effective support of our international business operations”, said Jack Ortman, Chief Technology Officer of Chiquita. “Azaleos was able to address Chiquita’s complex global requirements with their migration expertise and the unique Managed Services approach”.
“While relatively new, the Azaleos approach to e-mail deployment offers an alternative to a premises-based or hosted provisioning model,” writes Gartner research vice president Matt Cain in the report. “Chiquita successfully deployed a new e-mail provisioning paradigm over a very distributed topology: a hybrid model where the premises-based soft appliance is managed over the wire by Azaleos. The Azaleos approach to server deployment and management works.”
“Although challenging, Chiquita Brands made a smooth and successful transition from Novell to Exchange with the help of Azaleos’ experts,” said Phil Van Etten, Chief Executive Officer of Azaleos. “Our hybrid services model has enabled Chiquita to outsource the management of Exchange for its HQ and branch offices in the US, Europe and South America while maintaining perfect uptime.”
Azaleos Managed Services
Azaleos Managed Services provide the most complete and reliable set of remotely managed services for Exchange, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Blackberry Enterprise Server, and Active Directory. The Azaleos services model allows customers to keep hardware and data secure on their corporate premise, while outsourcing the monitoring and management headaches and costs. In addition to the core monitoring and management of Exchange Server, the Azaleos services include:
About Azaleos
Azaleos Corporation provides the benefits of hosted e-mail and collaboration services for organizations that can’t or won’t allow their data to reside outside the datacenter. Azaleos’ 24X7X365 remotely managed services for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Office Communications Server, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server keep information on-premise and under IT control, while uptime, maintenance, and support is handled by experts in its network operations centers.
More than 150 companies from Fortune 500 to mid-market enterprises rely on Azaleos and its patented ViewX technology to manage their collaboration infrastructures and address issues before users ever know they exist. Azaleos is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, and one of Microsoft’s top 35 partners in the US. For more information visit www.azaleos.com.
About Chiquita Brands International, Inc.
With annual revenues of approximately $4.7 billion, Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (NYSE: CQB) is a leading international marketer and distributor of high-quality fresh and value-added food products - from energy- rich bananas and other fruits to nutritious blends of convenient green salads. The company's products and services are designed to win the hearts and smiles of the world's consumers by helping them enjoy healthy fresh foods. The company markets its products under the Chiquita(R) and Fresh Express(R) premium brands and other related trademarks. Chiquita employs approximately 24,000 people operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit our web site at www.chiquita.com.
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Editorial Contact:
Marc Gendron
Marc Gendron PR
781-237-0341
marc@mgpr.net
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