Addison Lee selects jetNEXUS in drive towards Microsoft Exchange 2010

Existing partnership proved key in decision to go with ALB-X solution

London-based private hire minicab company Addison Lee has chosen load balancing solution provider jetNEXUS‘s ALB-X solution to ensure that it can cope with its migration to Microsoft Exchange 2010.

The firm, which serves over 10 million customers a year, had decided to switch from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 to improve its email service for employees and corporate clients.

Outlook connections on Exchange 2010 are handled by a Client Access Server (CAS) role, and load balancing can be used to manage external and internal connections across the CAS server array.

"We needed a load balancing solution that was simple, efficient and had the capacity to handle heavy 24/7 use. Microsoft recommends using third-party load balancers for new Exchange deployments, so we decided to build on our existing partnership with jetNEXUS," said Ian Reeves, senior IT support and technical lead, Addison Lee.

Addison Lee had used jetNEXUS's load balancing solution in another part of its business, and Reeves said that through this the taxi firm built up a good relationship with the technical team, which led to the decision to extend its partnership.

As Addison Lee was on a tight project deadline and was happy with jetNEXUS' existing hardware and services, the minicab company selected the firm without looking at any other vendors.

"jetNEXUS ALB-X was a solid fit for our upgraded Microsoft Exchange application, and the real convenience was that we could take advantage of the jetPACK configuration features that enabled us to deploy in minutes," Reeves told Computing.

"This removed a time-consuming IT configuration and set-up period and meant that the system was up and running within minutes rather than hours; ensuring minimal impact on business operations," he added.

The pre-configured set-up templates meant that everything was "cost-effective and easy to manage", according to Reeves, and was coupled with a "superb pre-sales service, which meant that we could rely on their quality support if needed".

Addison Lee had planned to use its existing jetNEXUS load balancers, but decided to dedicate two devices solely to handle Exchange traffic.

Reeves explained that the initial configuration of the load balancers for Exchange 2010 was "tricky", but that the company was fully supported by jetNEXUS' technical support team.

"They were able to talk us through the whole set up of deploying the jetPACK template for Microsoft Exchange," he said.

Reeves added that he believed that jetNEXUS will be able to continue to support Addison Lee in the future.

"Our business is always growing, and as such we're likely to add more off-site servers for greater capacity and resiliency.

"jetNEXUS is unrestricted on throughput, which is key for us as it will enable us to expand our requirements both quickly and cost-effectively," said Reeves.