An apartment complex in North Queensland has transformed its business operationsby using the NetBox to host its email. By installing the NetBox the company hascombined email hosting, content filtering, web filtering and anenterprise-class firewall into one consolidated appliance, saving SouthernCross Atrium Apartments money and improving staff productivity.

"Everyone should have a NetBox,"Southern Cross Atrium Apartments Manger Sam Ma says. "If you have more than afew staff members you need a NetBox."

The Situation

Staffmembers at Southern Cross Atrium Apartments handle the bookings and enquiriesfor 192 apartments in the resort style Cairnsapartment complex. Prior to installing a NetBox email was hosted externally.Only one staff member could access the email inbox at a time, slowing downoperations and causing confusion and frustration in the office. All mail wassaved on individual workstations. If the workstation crashed, the mail was lostalong with it. Staff members were spending up to two hours a day wading throughspam.

"There wastoo much junk email," Mr Ma says. "And we wanted more than one person to beable to access our email, that's why we wanted a NetBox."

The NetBoxoffered a solution to Southern Cross Atrium Apartments' problems in onecost-effective solution.

The Solution

Cairns ITreseller, Future Computers installed the NetBox with IMAP (Internet MessageAccess Protocols) access, giving Southern Cross Atrium Apartments multiple useraccess to their email and enabling them to host their email in-house on theNetBox.

This hasmany benefits for the company. Email is held on the NetBox, rather than theworkstation, until the user deletes it. If someone opens a message other userscan see at a glance that it has been dealt with, ensuring several staff membersaren't responding to the one email.

Withexternally hosted email, the provider had to be contacted to resolve issues andtrack down missing mail. The NetBox has enabled Mr Ma to regain control overthe company's email as well as benefit from the NetBox's many otherenterprise-class features - firewall, spam filtering, web filtering, networkmonitoring and reporting.

"We love theNetBox," Future Computers Senior Engineer, Wayne Oldrey says. "We push them asmuch as we can because they're trouble free and they take care of a lot ofthings in one hit, which is what makes it such a good product."

"We put onein at our own office and our spam dropped by 100%. It just stopped. It'sfantastic."

SouthernCross Atrium Apartments has had similar results.

The Results

The NetBoxhas ended Southern Cross Atrium Apartments' time-consuming spam problems andenabled the company to manage apartment booking and enquiries much moreefficiently.

"Previouslyone person had to quit Microsoft Outlook so another person could use it," Mr Masays. "Now everyone can share the workload and update bookings."

The companyhas also made use of the NetBox's traffic reports to assess how the internet isbeing used and abused. It was discovered that some staff members were regularlyvisiting inappropriate websites. The NetBox was used to block those sites.

"You don'twant to be monitoring everyone all of the time," Mr Ma says. "But with theNetBox I have a good idea of what websites are being visited and who's visitingthem."

"I woulddefinitely recommend the NetBox. Everyone needs one."