Integrated solution from IBM and Neocol allow Insurance Specialist Thomas Miller to archive 23 Million e-mails and reduce storage by 60%

Thomas Miller understands risk management, and with over 30,000 daily e-mails, realised they needed a reliable solution to satisfy growing compliance responsibilities and help to avoid potential crippling financial penalties.

Thomas Miller turned to us: IBM's leading partner for e-mail archiving and eDiscovery. Neocol has been involved in the implementation of IBM's archiving technology in some of the largest successful examples in the world.

Business Challenge

In order to meet with its corporate governance and regulatory compliance mandates (outlined in recent legislation such as SOX and BASEL II), the Thomas Miller Group identified key operational challenges that required immediate attention:

• Archive more than 30,000 e-mails and attachments per day
• Upgrade structure and indexing of data for rapid search and retrieval capabilities
• Retroactive indexing and archiving of company's past e-mails
• Improve management of storage demands (the existing database was almost at 100% capacity)

The Solution

• IBM DB2 offers deep compression to enable rapid use of data and reduced storage
• IBM Content Manager manages all e-mail content across multiple platforms & databases
• IBM CommonStore provides e-mail archival and retrieval, and manages Lotus Domino growth
• IBM eMailSearch provides compliance-based search, legal hold and export of archived e-mail
• Implemented on existing Wintel architecture and supported by a separate 3.3TB Disk Array

Implementation

Neocol structured the solution to integrate all e-mail content with other contextually similar documents, such as contracts, through a policy-driven archive, that maximises retrieval speed and accuracy. Linkage of mail-files and archived journal files provides "Single Instance Storage" saving space. System performance is enhanced by IBM's content archiving platform providing the ability to continually trim the Lotus Notes database.

After deployment the Journaling function on the mail servers was enabled, helping to ensure the 30,000 e-mails received daily are captured and archived, with full-text indexing being applied to every e-mail for ease of identification. In total 23 million e-mails and attachments were archived as part of the implementation, saving Thomas Miller huge resources spent on time-consuming manual search activities.

Business Benefits

IBM's eDiscovery platform offers Thomas Miller an integrated, on-demand e-mail storage and retrieval system that addresses their legal compliance needs.

• 30,000 e-mails and attachments are archived every day
• All e-mails are indexed for rapid search and retrieval capabilities
• 23 million e-mails retroactively archived in case relevant format and eDiscovery ready
• Deep compression and Single Instance Storage functionality reduced storage by 60%
• Users now benefit from unlimited mailbox management

About Thomas Miller

Founded in 1884, Thomas Miller has a long tradition and reputation for service. The firm incorporated in 1999 and is now owned and controlled by its employees. Thomas Miller. a leader in its field manages some of the most important insurance mutuals in the international transport and professional indemnity sectors.

Visit the Thomas Miller website