Saint John Vianney and Sonian -- Real World Solutions

Related Articles

• Indiana Wesleyan University and Quantum Corp. -- Real World Solutions
• Real World Solutions from People in the Trenches Featuring Zix Corporation and Bank Iowa
• Real World Solutions from People in the Trenches Featuring Sendio and Pechanga Resort & Casino

Subscription Options

Subscribe Magazine

Subscribe Newswire

Widgets & RSS Feeds

Several years ago Network Administrator Tom McKenna moved the email system of Saint John Vianney — a private, Catholic institution based in Holmdel, NJ with over 1,000 students — to Gmail, which Google provides for free to schools and universities as part of its Google Apps for Education offering. Since Gmail is a hosted service, Saint John Vianney was spared the expense and hassle of installing and managing a mail server.

While Gmail’s plentiful free storage provision ensured that Saint John Vianney didn’t have to worry about over flowing mailboxes, it did not include a hosted archiving service that would meet the school’s seven-year email retention policy. McKenna’s next step was to find and install an affordable email archiving system that would complement the school’s new Gmail system.

McKenna explored several hosted solutions recommended by Gmail and selected Sonian’s cloud-based email archiving and eDiscovery service largely based on cost. When measured against hosted email and archiving suites, the combination of Gmail and Sonian was still less expensive. “As far as I’m concerned, Saint John Vianney has a best-of-breed solution with the combined Gmail and Sonian services,” says McKenna. “Their SLAs mean they worry about the data by providing capabilities that we could never afford, such as redundancy, multiple data center backups, climate controlled data centers, etc. All at a fair price.”