"We rely heavily on email as our primary form of communication. Without it our employees would really struggle and there’s no doubt that productivity levels would crash..."
John Bagley, Technical Manager
The London borough of Barking and Dagenham Council in East London is one of 33 local councils in London and serves 167,000 residents. The council has an it infrastructure of approximately 3,000 users based over 13 buildings in the borough. John Bagley is the Technical Manager at Barking and Dagenham Council and has been with the Council for 17 years. During that time, John has been responsible for ongoing implementation and maintenance of the IT infrastructure.
For Barking and Dagenham Council, the use of email is critical to the successful running of the business. Employees use email to communicate with and send information to residents, suppliers and partners, the local police, health authorities and other councils. Employees send between 15,000 and 20,000 emails per day. Bagley explains: “We rely heavily on email as our primary form of communication. Without it our employees would really struggle and there’s no doubt that productivity levels would crash.” Barking and Dagenham Council installed a security solution at the same time as installing an email infrastructure in 1997. "We chose Clearswift’s MIMEsweeper for SMTP software due to its great reputation for reliability and its role as market leader,” explained Bagley. “Our main motivation for choosing the solution was digital threats such as viruses. We wanted to be able to protect our IT environment in the best possible way."
The implementation of Clearswift’s MIMEsweeper for SMTP allowed Bagley to ensure a safe and secure email infrastructure, which ensured that Barking and Dagenham Council has never fallen victim to a virus attack or other security breach. In October 2005, Barking and Dagenham Council upgraded its Clearswift solution to the newly launched MIMEsweeper SMTP Appliance, which was designed specifically to address the issues faced by those responsible for email management and includes extensive and easy-to-use reporting facilities.
