Baltimore Capital Case Study

"Outsourcing our Exchange server to Intermedia just made sense for us. We needed something reliable, affordable, convenient, and most importantly secure."
—Sean Greely, chief officer of operations, Baltimore Capital

Baltimore Capital’s decision to partner with Intermedia was based upon the return on investment they would see by choosing a hosted Exchange solution, the security and support they would receive on the Intermedia platform, and Intermedia’s experience with the financial services industry. Hosted Exchange allows for all of the benefits of an in-house Exchange server but without the cost and headaches of having to build, manage and maintain the solution.

Background

Baltimore Capital is a Maryland-based investment advisory firm. For over 10 years the company has served the investment needs of individuals, pension and profit sharing plans, trusts, estates, and charitable organizations. In order to remain competitive, the company must have the same technological and business capabilities as larger firms. Baltimore Capital needed a solution that included business-grade features and added security and compliance in order to meet industry standards and regulations. After considering these needs and reviewing their options, Baltimore Capital decided a Microsoft Exchange solution was their best fit. Microsoft Exchange includes all of the features that Baltimore Capital identified as crucial to doing business.

The challenge

For Baltimore Capital to deploy an in-house solution, upfront costs would exceed close to $40,000, not including staff time necessary to maintain the environment. Baltimore Capital realized that they couldn’t afford the investment or management staff necessary to build the solution in-house, so they set out to find an alternative.

From a cost perspective, hosted Exchange allows businesses to plan for a regular monthly fee with no surprise upgrade or maintenance costs. The fee is calculated on a per-user basis, making it easy for businesses to project future costs based on expected future hires and staff growth. “By paying a low fee each month rather than a huge upfront investment, we are able to invest in other projects that help us continue to grow our business,” says Sean Greely, chief officer of operations, Baltimore Capital. From an IT perspective, hosted Exchange allows companies like Baltimore Capital to maintain control over important things such as mailbox creation, wireless email activation, distribution lists, and more, while taking away the hassle of purchasing and managing hardware and software.

Once Baltimore Capital identified hosted Exchange as its ideal solution, the company needed to choose the right provider. Greely worked with Intermedia in the past and felt they were the perfect provider for Baltimore Capital because of Intermedia’s financial services focus.

The solution

Intermedia’s hosted Exchange solution required no additional work or technical requirements from Baltimore Capital. Greely used Intermedia’s proprietary HostPilot® Control Panel to create mailboxes for all staff members.

All businesses within the financial services industry are obligated to comply with numerous industry regulations and standards in connection with the preservation, monitoring and eDiscovery of electronic business communications. Baltimore Capital is no different. In order to meet these regulations the company again turned to Intermedia for a hosted solution. The third-party compliant archiving solution that Intermedia provided captures and archives an authentic and complete record of all electronic business communications (email and attachments, IM, e-fax, Bloomberg, Reuters, BlackBerry and any imported legacy email and PST files) in a secure but easily accessible offsite storage system for regulatory compliance, audits and legal eDiscovery purposes. Intermedia’s hosted offering is specifically engineered to meet the stringent electronic communications compliance requirements of the SEC, FINRA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). “The archiving solution from Intermedia has worked very well for us. Searching archived messages is simple and fast and the service itself requires no attention at all,” says Greely.

The results

Through hosted Microsoft Exchange and hosted compliant archiving from Intermedia, Baltimore Capital has access to the same email, collaboration and compliance technology that it’s large, Fortune 500 competitors have. Baltimore Capital was able to fulfill their email and collaboration needs with the advanced features of hosted Exchange while the strenuous industry e-communications standards and regulations that they must meet are covered with Intermedia’s third-party compliant archiving solution. For a simple and regular monthly fee, Baltimore Capital can focus on its business and let the experts at Intermedia manage the technology needed to do that business.