With every Boston Celtics employee depending on email for vital business communication, the amount of spam bombarding the organization inboxes was staggering – despite running two anti-spam programs to combat the problem. Too much spam found its way into user mailboxes while important business emails were not reaching their destination.

The spam created another problem – the liability created by inappropriate content. "Executives have no patience for this kind of performance" said Jay Wessel, Boston Celtics senior director of technology. In addition to handling user complaints, Wessel and his staff were simply spending way too much time personally monitoring users’ email.

Wessel and his staff, needed to find a new anti-spam solution that offered robust filtering, easy set-up and adjustments while accommodating the delivery of critical emails. He called in CBE Technologies to consult on an anti-spam solution.

"CBE’s security expertise came highly recommended. They really are a good resource and have enough engineering resources that there is always someone on the team who is an expert in anti-spam technologies. I also like CBE’s product neutral approach. They provide options and recommend solutions that make sense" said Wessel.

The Boston Celtics needed a solution that could be easily deployed, noninvasive to the existing infrastructure, easy to administer and stay within a limited budget. "CBE Technologies was quick to understand my needs, including cost," explained Wessel. "They then helped me review my options and recommended the Barracuda Spam Firewall 400 for the headquarters location and the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 for my remote site. They also worked with me to evaluate the solution in my environment to ensure the results I wanted were met."

High Performance and Lower Costs Drive Decision

Along with the cost advantages, Wessel appreciates the robust search and retrieve capabilities of the Barracuda Spam Firewall. "Barracuda has great search features and stores the quarantined emails so that you can go back and retrieve the inadvertent email that may have been filtered." He also notes that the profile created for the 400 model imported seamlessly to the 200 model.

Also, customizable reports is a valuable feature which the Boston Celtics technical staff uses to review the amount of spam and viruses that are blocked as well as to determine the total amount of email that the server is servicing.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall has been performing seamlessly for more than two full NBA seasons. Serving as the first line of defense, it has a 99%+ effective rate in controlling spam. Users are happy and can concentrate on business. For Wessel, the long hours spent combating spam are over, and the CBE/Barracuda solution was a fraction of the cost of the other anti-spam solutions in place.