A simple thing can become a big problem, even e-mails. Yorkshire Water knew that data storage could soon be a major issue. By working with Neocol, a problem was soon turned into an opportunity.

The Business Problem

Yorkshire Water has been using Lotus Notes since 1994. The organisation is a heavy user, with a Domino infrastructure spanning six primary Lotus Notes mail servers hosting approximately four thousand Lotus Notes mail-files. Conscious of the fact that the messaging environment was expanding rapidly, Yorkshire Water conducted a survey and highlighted a total mail-file size of 509GB with an estimated total file attachent size of 441GB, demonstrating that approximately 85% of Domino storage is taken up by file attachments.

Based on these findings, the organisation realised the need for a solution to actively achieve mail-file size reduction specifically focused atthe archive of historic file attachments. It was critical that the solution would cause minimal change to the user environment and still allow instant retrieval of any archived data.

The Solution

After a rigourous tender process, involving a total of six vendors, Yorkshire Water chose IBM CommonStore for Domino as the solution for their requirements. Based upon proven technology with over nine thousand installs, CommonStore is the recommended route from IBM for the secure archive of any Lotus Notes data including e-mail, attachments and even full applications.

Although not a key driver of the project, Yorkshire Water realise the on-going pressure on organisations to comply with numerous regulations surrounding the secure retention of e-mail. With IBM CommonStore, they will quickly be able to implement an e-mail retention policy complete with associated storage management.

About Yorkshire Water

Yorkshire Water, part of the Kelda Group, provides 1.7m households and 140,000 businesses with water and sewerage services. The organisation manages the collection, treatment and distribution of water, supplying around 1.24 billion litres of drinking water each day - that's the equivalent of a glass of water for every person on the plant. Yorkshire Water also collect, treat and return about one billion litres of waste water safely back into the environment everyday.

Visit the Yorkshire Water website