Customers

Town of Weymouth Strengthens Connectivity with Scalix Email Platform

Town of Weymouth

A town in the South Shore region of Boston with a population of about 55,000

Requirement

A secure, easy to manage Linux-based email platform with group calendaring and full-feature Outlook support.

Products

  • Scalix Enterprise Edition
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Scalix Web Access
  • Scalix Management Console

Business overview

The town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, enjoys a rich history as the second oldest town in the commonwealth next to historic Plymouth. As in its past, Weymouth is a distinctly proud community of residents who identify with their town as the place they were born, grew up, and often return, to raise their own families. From one end of town to the other, the accent is on sustaining neighborhood ties amongst seniors, parents, teens, and children.

Challenge

The email system already in use, said David Cawthorne, Technology Coordinator, Weymouth Public Schools, “was a plain vanilla, open source web-based system that allowed teachers to access email from home without requiring us to configure a POP client.” That plain vanilla system, however, was no longer enough. Both town and school systems wanted richer calendaring and scheduling functionality for a busy and growing town on the move.

Messaging requirements

Cawthorne and Weymouth IT director Jim Limbey were in collaborative talks. “Jim and I liked the idea of finding a high-performance web-based client so we didn’t have to manage desktops.” Cawthorne says they simply couldn’t stretch limited resources beyond their limits, a situation all too familiar to school systems and townships nationwide. On the school side, for example, he said, “We have 2,000 computers and 14 schools and we have a staff of three – two others and myself.”

Another requirement was group calendaring. The messaging system the town had been using was limited in functionality. They began to feel the limitations of not having group calendaring that ensures meetings are scheduled in an efficient, time-saving way.

Neither Cawthorne or Limbey felt Exchange was the answer, as both the school and town IT staff were reluctant to risk security holes. “We handle sensitive information from the municipal and school side,” said Cawthorne. “We were looking for better security and felt we could find this on a system based on Linux, which we use for our firewalls today. We need to know we are well protected. Linux gives us that assurance.”

The goal was to find a Linux-based email system that had rich groupware functionality, a fast and highly productive web client, full-feature Outlook support, cross-compatibility with Windows and Macintosh desktops, a secure environment, and a low total cost of ownership.

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