Axigen delivers to Vroon an Online-Offline Aggregated, Collaborative, and Coordinated Email Server
ORGANIZATION PROFILE
Seagoing Transportation
Based in The Netherlands
4,000+ Employees
Axigen Messaging Products & Services
An international shipping company, with more than a century's experience, Vroon delivers reliable, high-quality, and cost-effective services, based on traditional values and a proven track record.
With headquarters located in Breda (the Netherlands), the company employs about 4,000 professionals in offices around the world and on board a diverse fleet of approximately 200 vessels.
Vroon is active — through various subsidiaries and under different brand names — in the following business segments: livestock carriers; offshore-support vessels; offshore installation, maintenance, and engineering services; dry-cargo vessels; container vessels; product / chemical tankers; asphalt / bitumen tankers; car carriers and vessel-management services.
CHALLENGE
ONLINE? OFFLINE?
If you treat all transport vessels as ”standalone-but-permanently-on-the-move” offices that have to communicate with management companies, agents, clients, and with each other by email, you get a complex network of on-site email servers that go online on and off but have to be always operating.
HOW ABOUT SWITCHING AUTOMATICALLY?
The challenge consisted in finding the best configuration to be technically effective and financially efficient.
There were also some technical details on the subject of caching emails when offline and automatic sync when back online.<
THE SOLUTION
An optimized licensing configuration that allows the flexibility required by the distinctive needs of the HQ vs. Vessels and Vessels vs. Vessels dynamic system. A down-scale initial project was chosen in order to constitute the Proof of Concept implementation.
Axigen's WebMail for the end-user is recognized for its outstanding features that give it a fancy email client look and feel: multiple visual themes to personalize your view, the compact, contained user interface with multiple tabs of different types simultaneously available in one browser tab / view, calendaring function with availability discovery, filters that help you organize and increase effectiveness, and many more.
In addition to the standard messaging functions, the system allows the admin to obtain reports in graphic view along with SNMP based counters through the Reporting and Monitoring module. A strong mail server security system, composed of 12+ security layers embedded in the Axigen solution, makes it a wise choice for the security focused admins / businesses.
Axigen developed a flexible, scalable offer both for Licensing and Support services packs. Vroon had the liberty to choose out of a list of combinations of Perpetual vs. Yearly license along with FIRsT and Premium Support for a specific number of servers and different time intervals.
PROJECT
Vroon made first contact by downloading the Axigen trial version to check the Admin console and evaluate user experience. By getting in contact with one of Axigen experts, the project set its requirements and the solution design started to develop.
The Axigen team have designed a customized silent installer for the Axigen Windows Server, along with initial provisioning of vessels' accounts and set the routing rules for communicating with the core email server. That optimized installation time for each end point with no need of physical assistance at the vessel site.
Vroon employees use the email service via WebMail, so the superior Axigen WebMail user interface and user experience constituted a clear competitive advantage compared with all the other mail server solutions.
Vroon chose to start by implementing a pilot project, rolling it out to a limited group of users. This allowed the engineers to assess and validate the solution as the users were being introduced to the benefits of using the new email system.
We found Axigen as being the right product for our requirements. We had a smooth communication process which helped us in getting to a solution matching our requirements in a short time frame.
Based on the information we had after the pilot implementation, we optimized the package in order to scale up the solution and roll it out to our entire fleet of vessels.
Both parties involved worked having a common objective in mind, since Vroon came into the project with a clear vision over the solution they were looking for. We had the fortune to be in contact with Wesley Vandamme, ICT Shipboard Infrastructure Manager, a tech-savvy person with great organizational skills who knew very well how to evaluate and choose the best solution to meet the complexity of the requirements.