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Latest Case Studies
Requirement
Sofina Foods, a leading Canadian food manufacturer with global operations and over 20 facilities across North America, needed to modernise its email archiving solution to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance compliance.
The sheer volume of sensitive data in legacy email archives (from personal identifiable information (PII) to intellectual property and financial records) make them a target for bad actors. Rather than wait for a security Incident, migration to the cloud would not only provide a scalable solution, but one that would ensure regulatory compliance and avoid costly data breaches.
As a specialist in legacy data migration TrueSwift was asked to migrate 5.5TB of email data from their on-premises Exclaimer Mail Archiver to the Barracuda Cloud Archive Service (BCAS). A seamless transition was essential to improve data accessibility, reduce IT overheads, and enhance scalability.
Key Challenges
While using Exclaimer Mail Archiver, Sofina Foods faced several challenges that hindered their data management efficiency:
- On-Premises Maintenance: The burden of maintaining an on-premises archiving solution led to increased IT overheads, including hardware maintenance, software updates, and storage management.
- Scalability Concerns: The company's growing data volume strained the existing Exclaimer Mail Archiver infrastructure, creating scalability concerns and the potential for performance bottlenecks.
- Limited eDiscovery Capabilities: While functional, the eDiscovery features of the existing system were not meeting Sofina's evolving needs for granular search and advanced compliance audits.
- Desire for Cloud Efficiency: A need for a more accessible, flexible, and cost-effective archiving solution led Sofina Foods to explore cloud-based options.
In addition to the above business-related challenges, a number of technical challenges also needed to be overcome:
- Proprietary Format: Data in the Exclaimer solution was stored in a proprietary format. It was not possible to simply copy email from Exclaimer to BCAS
- Data Formatting: Once the data was extracted, it needed to be processed into a format compatible with onwards ingestion into BCAS
- Data Ingestion: The formatted data needed to be ingested securely
Sofina Foods also required a service that did not rely heavily on access to any internal resources, either personnel or infrastructure.
The Solution
TrueSwift, with its expertise in seamless data migration, presented Sofina Foods with a comprehensive solution:
- Detailed Assessment and Planning: A thorough assessment of the existing Exclaimer Mail Archiver environment was conducted, analysing data volume, infrastructure, and specific requirements. A detailed migration plan was then developed to minimise disruption and ensure data integrity.
- Seamless Data Migration: TrueSwift's experienced team executed the migration of 5.5TB of email data from Exclaimer Mail Archiver to the Barracuda Cloud Archive Service. This involved carefully mapping data, ensuring data consistency, and adhering to strict security protocols.
- Data Validation and Verification: Post-migration, TrueSwift performed rigorous data validation and verification to ensure all data was accurately transferred and accessible within BCAS.
- TrueSwift Migration Factory™ (TMF) solution: In addition to professional services and specialist migration tools, the TMF solution included the required infrastructure to deliver the project, including networking, servers and storage to extract, process and securely ingest the data to BCAS.
- Fast Engagement Timeline: As all the infrastructure requirements were provided by TrueSwift, the lead time for engagement was just 24 hours and extractions were started within 48 hours.
- Technical Engagement: A close working relationship with the Barracuda technical team ensured a seamless migration.
About The Engagement
Once initiated, the extraction was scheduled to run 24/7. Network bandwidth and data storage was configured to optimise this phase of the project.
Once extracted, the TrueSwift ArchiveX tool processed the data and stored it in a format optimised for fast ingestion into the BCAS environment.
The project was also managed 24/7 to ensure the quickest throughput and reduced project timeframe. Throughout the engagement, weekly status reports were provided to keep the customer up to date with progress and detailed insights into performance and other throughput metrics.
