40 employees
ARTIN, s.r.o. was founded in 1998. The company develops custom software applications and provides application development consulting services.
As the company grew, its Linux-based email became less efficient at handling everyday tasks, such as scheduling and protecting against spam.
Microsoft Office 365 provided a secure email platform, easier scheduling, and reduced IT administration.
Easier scheduling Less spam, more secure email Reduced IT admin time
Professional Services
Czech Republic
English
Based in the Czech Republic, ARTIN, s.r.o. specializes in custom-built software and consulting services.It had grown to the point that it needed a powerful solution for its team communications and collaboration, as it had become more and more complex and difficult to perform even routine tasks such as scheduling group meetings.
“When 15 people have to compare schedules and agree on a place and time to meet, it’s fairly simple,” says Jan Najvárek, Co-Owner of ARTIN. “By the time the company grew to more than 40 employees however, scheduling a single meeting could literally take several hours over the course of a week.” Because ARTIN wanted to focus on application development rather than server maintenance, the company’s leadership decided to investigate cloud-based services. They found a solution in Microsoft Office 365.
The company had relied on the same Linux-based Microsoft Outlook email solution for years, but it wasn’t equipped to handle the influx of spam, phishing, and other malicious email threats that are commonplace today.
Since we moved to Office 365, our daily volume of incoming malicious emails has gone from hundreds per employee to nearly zero. That is huge.
– Jan Najvárek
Co-Owner
ARTIN, s.r.o.
According to Najvárek, the incoming junk emails often outnumbered the legitimate business messages. “Some of our employees were receiving up to 200 spam or virus-infected mails per day,” he says. “Some of these were intercepted at the desktop, but the success of that was dependent upon employees keeping their individual workstation antivirus up-to-date.”
Najvárek felt that an on-premises server solution would require too much management and maintenance. “I couldn’t justify taking someone away from developing applications for clients, and having them focus solely on server administration,” he states. “Our customers have always been our first priority, so it just wasn’t a cost-effective solution.”
After doing some research, ARTIN decided that its best option was going to be a cloud-based solution. The company compared Google Apps and Office 365, and felt that Microsoft offered the best combination of cost support, and service.
ARTIN felt that the Google offering fell short in a number or critical areas, and that Office 365 was the best choice to address the scheduling and spam issues that had been impacting staff productivity. It also provided a level of support that would keep all of the company’s developer employees focused on customer projects rather than internal IT maintenance.
Office 365 offered easy access to email and phone support, which helped the company get up and running quickly with the new service, and to easily resolve any issues the employees encountered. “It was important to us to sort out any questions immediately so our employees could get back to serving customers,” says Najvárek. “It appeared there would be a lot of downtime waiting for Google support, but with Microsoft, we could get help immediately, whenever we needed it.”
The hands-free administration of Office 365 has been great. All of our staff has been able to remain focused on building applications for our customers, and we’re not locked in to paying recurring license fees for standalone software products.
– Jan Najvárek
Co-Owner
ARTIN, s.r.o.
They also found that Google calendars did not integrate well with Outlook. Because Microsoft Exchange Online, the hosted email component of Office 365, provides tight integration with the Outlook client, ARTIN gained seamless synchronization of inboxes, calendars, contacts, tasks, and notes between computers, notebooks, and mobile phones. This made scheduling much easier for employees than it had been with the previous solution. “Being able to view everyone’s schedules at once reduced the process of organizing meetings from days, down to just a few clicks of a mouse,” says Najvárek. “It’s completely transformed our scheduling processes!”
With Office 365, desktop antivirus and malicious email are a thing of the past for ARTIN. Because Office 365 provides comprehensive spam and malware protection from the cloud, Najvárek and his team no longer have to worry about keeping antivirus definitions up-to-date on local machines. “There is great peace of mind in knowing that malicious emails are being stopped by Office 365 before they even get to our desktops,” he states. “Now our staff can spend time addressing business-related emails―because that’s the only kind they are receiving now!”
ARTIN was easily able to manage its own migration from Linux to Office 365 without any third-party technical assistance. Any questions that arose were quickly addressed with the help of Office 365 support. According to Najvárek, the solution has met all of the company’s needs.
Streamlined Scheduling
“The biggest benefit has definitely been the simple scheduling between managers and employees, and the ability to reserve meeting rooms,” he says. “Before, we were struggling just to determine when everybody could meet, but now we’re able to set up meetings and reserve suitably large meeting room up to a year in advance!”
Dramatically Decreased Spam
Najvárek says that the decrease in spam and viruses with Office 365 has been spectacular. “Since we moved to Office 365, our daily volume of incoming malicious emails has gone from hundreds per employee to nearly zero. That is huge.” He also estimates that ARTIN is now regaining at least 1 hour per employee, per week, thanks to the improved malware protection of Office 365.
Reduced IT Administration Costs
Being able to eliminate the need for internal server maintenance and software licensing fees has meant real savings for ARTIN. Says Najvárek, “The hands-free administration of Office 365 has been great. All of our staff has been able to remain focused on building applications for our customers, and we’re not locked in to paying recurring license fees for standalone software products. I’d say those two factors alone are going to save us nearly 50 hours annually.”
Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.
Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.
Microsoft Case Study: ARTIN, s.r.o.