Sunridge Properties
Industry: Hotel Development and Management
Network Size: 12 users
“Right away, spam was down ninety-five percent”
Background
Until a short time ago, Brian Welker, President of Arizona-based hotel business Sunridge Properties, was a man with a problem. “My staff and I were spending a lot of time on the road, checking out development projects as we expanded our property base” says Brian. “Because we wanted to be able to stay connected we invested in Blackberries. These pulled email directly off our mail server back at the office.”
The solution looked like it would be perfect, but Brian and team were in for a surprise. Their investment in “going mobile” was being compromised by spam.
Every Five Minutes
“It got to the point where our Blackberries were buzzing every five minutes to tell us we had mail. In fact most of the mail we received was spam. It drove us crazy, and the whole system became ineffective. If my Blackberry buzzed I just figured it was spam, because most of the time that’s exactly what it was. The real problem came when this started causing me to miss important emails.”
Spam was even interrupting Brian’s sleep. “During the night I’d leave my Blackberry to charge on the dresser. It got to the point where I’d hear it buzzing dozens of times each night because of incoming spam. In the end I just used to get up and switch the thing off.”
The Untangle Solution
On the advice of Sunridge’s IT provider, Brian installed Untangle as a line of defense in front of his mail server. The effect was immediate.
“Right away, spam was down ninety-five percent,” he says. “It took my IT guy just a little while to install and configure, and he came back a couple of times to monitor progress and adjust the settings.”
The reduction in spam removed a huge source of irritation and allowed the Sunridge Blackberries to do the job they were meant to do – deliver hassle-free mobile communications. It also saved Brian and his team a lot of time. “Even when I was on my office computer, most mornings I’d spend ten minutes deleting spam. Ten minutes every day soon adds up – that’s time I’d rather spend doing something else.”
One thing Brian can do in a couple of the minutes that Untangle has freed up is check the system’s weekly reports. These reports detail the spam, spyware and virus threats that have been identified and neutralized and also enable him to get a picture of his staff’s network activities. “Untangle has been a great solution for us,” he says. “It protects the investment we made in Blackberries as a mobile solution and just does away with the whole spam issue.”