Mithi Connect Xf Case Study Aegon Religare Life Insurance

Copyright 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies

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Collaboration Infrastructure for the Agile Enterprise.

A Business Case Study

Aegon Religare Life Insurance Company
Requirement

Solution

Top Benefits

Drive down the cost of providing

email infrastructure to a rapidly
growing workforce, without
compromise on performance

Mithi provided a hybrid solution

of MS Exchange with OSS based
Connect XD to help derive the
cost benefits without
compromise on special features
or performance

Faster & Higher ROI is an

automatic result of lower TCO
and no compromise.

Mithi Connect Xf Case Study Aegon Religare Life Insurance

Copyright 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies

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Overview

Email Costs trigger the search for alternatives

Country/Region : India

Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com), in a study conducted

by them, recently surveyed IT professionals at North American and
European enterprises to find out where they run their email, calendar,
contact, and task list services (what Forrester refers to as messaging or
email services). Forrester found that cost is the trigger for may of these
enterprises to consider shifting from their current systems.

Industry: Insurance
Customer Profile
AEGON, an international life
insurance, pension and investment
company, Religare, a global financial
services group and Bennett, Coleman
& Company, Indias largest media
house, have come together to launch
AEGON Religare Life Insurance
Company Limited (AEGON Religare).
This venture is dedicated to build a
profitable customer-centric business
with scale, providing a work
environment that fosters excellence
and innovation.
AEGON Religare launched its panIndia operations in July, 2008
following a multi-channel distribution
strategy..

Even a back-of-the-envelope estimation of the fully loaded cost of

email, factoring in costs of hardware, server software, client software,
spam protection, staff, maintenance, storage, archiving, mobile email,
and financing, can throw up an astoundingly high figure.
Analysing and reducing the fully loaded email costs:
To analyze the costs of providing email in a way that reveals where
costs can be controlled, its important to segment your employees
based on what they actually need in email.
So while the top executives would require a fully loaded email solution
with Blackberry & Outlook, the middle management and information
workers would need most of the email features minus the frills, and the
external/field staff can do with basic functional email.

Insurance business in India

The US$ 41-billion Indian life
insurance industry is considered the
fifth largest life insurance market, and
growing at a rapid pace of 32-34 per
cent annually.
The growth of Indian insurance
industry took off after opening up of
the insurance sector to private players
and
allowing
foreign
direct
investment.

Background
The parent companies - Religare Group and AEGON were both using
MS Exchange as their mailing system. So it was natural for AEGON
Religare to consider following suit and adopt MS Exchange for its
mailing requirements during its inception stage.
However, the Indian financial market conditions are different. The lower
transaction value per customer, rapid growth and a highly competitive
business environment means lower revenue per employee. The result is
a pressure to keep costs low across the board.
"We wanted to have an effective email solution that could bring down
the cost of e-mail per employee."
Srinivasan Iyengar Director IT
& Operations

Challenge
The key challenge for the IT team at AEGON Religare was to lower the
cost of providing e-mail to its fast-growing employee base without
compromising on key features and functionalities.

Mithi Connect Xf Case Study Aegon Religare Life Insurance

Copyright 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies

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Solution
We are always trying to explore
ways to manage costs efficiently. And
this has been one of the significant
projects that we have undertaken to
cut costs.
Rajeev Chugh Financial
Controller

Srinivasan Iyengar, Director IT & Operations, was aware of the cost and
scalability benefits offered by Open Source but also did not want to
compromise on the features required by the key employees. So he
proposed implementing a hybrid solution using a combination of MS
Exchange and Open Source Software.
AEGON Religare decided to consider OSS based solutions as a way to
lower the cost providing email to its employees. The plan was to extend
the MS Exchange 2007 based email set-up for additional users.

The search zeroes down to Mithi

After evaluating a few open source software based email solutions, the
AEGON Religare IT team zeroed in on Connect XD from Mithi an
open, scalable and adaptable email and collaboration solution. After
initial rounds of discussions with the Mithi team and reference checks
with Mithis customers, they decided to do a Proof-of-Concept (POC).
Key expectations from the POC

The implementation of Connect XD

have resulted in impressive savings of
between 40 and 50 percent. The
results are way beyond our
expectations. We have also scale
tested the system for up to 20,000
users."
Srinivasan Iyengar Director IT
& Operations

Seamless integration with MS Exchange 2007 for mail-flow

A Shared Address Book across both the two systems
Seamless access through MS Outlook for all users.
Scalability to accommodate rapid growth
Implementation
The POC was a success, and the team decided to go ahead with a plan
to have only about 200-250 of its senior executives - those who also
needed to work closely with the parent company - on Microsoft
Exchange, while the rest of the employees, mostly from branch offices,
were to be put onto Connect XD.

Mithi Connect Xf Case Study Aegon Religare Life Insurance

Copyright 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies

Mithi's expertise in hybrid solutions

and exemplary support during and
post implementation ensured that the
implementation was smooth and
transparent to most users,
Paras Kothari, Asst. VP, IT

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Mithi team worked closely with the Aegon Religare team led by Mr.
Paras Kothari, Assistant VP, IT, to implement the solution while ensuring
there were no disruptions in the existing system.
The implementation of Connect XD resulted in impressive savings of
between 40 and 50 percent. "The results are way beyond our
expectations," says Iyengar. Which is why Iyengar doesn't see the
reason why more organizations won't follow his approach given that
mailboxes are a commodity. "By default you don't expect much from a
mailbox. Unlike an app you don't wonder what business value it can
offer or the sort of revenue it can generate. It's just a mailbox, he
says.
The Open Source solution is also scalable. Iyengar says he has tested
his system for up to 20,000 users. "And I don't have to deal with
sophisticated or high-end servers," he says.
Mithi's solution provides automated synchronisation between the
Microsoft Active Directory and Open LDAP directory used in Connect XD
to offer a global address book accessible to both MS Exchange and
Connect XD users.

For More Information

For more information about Aegon
Religare Life Insurance, please visit
http://www.aegonreligare.com
For more information about Mithis
products and services, please visit
http://www.mithi.com
Mithi Solutions center
Mithi can consult you to understand
your requirement, and suggest the
best-fit solution on open standards.
To know more about how Mithi has
helped over 250 of its customers
derive benefit from an open solution,
please visit http://www.mithi.com.

Benefits
Besides the 40-50% cost benefit on the email infrastructure, some
other key benefits provided by Connect XD included

Same mail domain for the hybrid combination of Exchange and

Connect XD
High Reliability
Easy Scalability
Efficient utilization of IT resources

Encouraged by the savings with Connect XD, Kothari's team recently

migrated more than 1000 users from Outlook to Thunderbird to further
consolidate the cost gains.
Connect XD
Mithi's Connect XD is currently powering the email systems of over 250
customers in India and abroad.

References

Forrester Research http://www.forrester.com/

CIO.in Case Study: Aegon Religare Got Great Savings With an Open Source Email Solution
http://www.cio.in/case-study/aegon-religare-used-open-source-email-solution-and-saved

Indian life insurance industry http://www.ibef.org/industry/insurance_industry.aspx

Forrester Report on Email Cost Analysis
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/pdf/forrester_cloud_email_cost_analysis.pdf

Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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