Case Study: Environmental Defense Fund achieves over 50% lower email TCO and eliminates PST files with Mimecast

TCO comparison shows Mimecast is less than half of in-house systems

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a national environmental nonprofit with about 400 email users, faced growing mailbox sizes after moving to Exchange—many approached 5GB—causing slow Outlook performance and creating a heavy backup burden from user-created PST files. Attempts to limit inboxes and rely on PSTs proved unsustainable, and early in-house archiving options were costly and still would not reduce IT workload.

EDF evaluated cloud options and selected Mimecast for dedicated email management, archiving, security and continuity; the July 2008 rollout was smooth and transparent to users. The result: PSTs eliminated, archived messages searchable in seconds, six servers (including two Exchange boxes) decommissioned, overall email TCO cut to less than half of an in‑house solution, improved performance and virus protection, stronger eDiscovery readiness, and a reduced carbon footprint.

Environmental Defense Fund

Brian Attas

Chief Information Officer