FJVA's painless migration to Cryoserver

Pain-free migration from Exclaimer Mail Archiver to us

Alexandre Mérer is Head of IT at Francis J. Vassallo & Associates Group (FJVA), a company services provider based in Malta.

When he joined FJVA in 2019, the firm was archiving emails with Exclaimer Mail Archiver (standalone).

By 2020, he’d started to use Microsoft 365 for live archiving, and Exclaimer as a static solution for older emails. He didn’t yet know about Cryoserver and what we could do for his business.

Then he heard that Exclaimer was end-of-lifing their archiving solution and would no longer support it. He needed to migrate to an alternative solution – one that would enable FJVA employees to easily access archived emails. He asked Exclaimer for their advice and they recommended us.

Alexandre looked into Cryoserver and compared it with other options. He decided that we offered the best on-premises solution – the runner up was only available in the cloud; Cryoserver offers both options.

Migrating to Cryoserver was easy

Describing how he switched to us, he says:

“First, we had very nice meetings with Cryoserver. Mr Bingeman [Cryoserver Director] took the time to understand our needs and concerns. He explained to us the Cryoserver product and his experience in the migration process, especially with Exclaimer Mail Archiver.”

In October 2022, Cryoserver began migrating approximately 600GB of emails from FJVA’s Exclaimer archive to their new Cryoserver repository.

The export process consisted of different phases, and Alexandre says our team explained it and guided it “very well”. We exported a sample together, as a test, and then migrated the remainder. There were errors along the way, but as he says, “we fixed them together.”

Exporting data affordably

The entire migration took about one month. It was not expensive, he says, and the final cost was as originally quoted in FJVA’s contract.

Alexandre appreciated our using monday.com for the project management, saying “FJVA could see all the steps to achieve the migration.” And it was easy for him to keep in touch with us by email and video calls.

He says: “Robin [Bingeman] and Merlin [Senior Developer] helped us from day one. Their software implementation went smoothly, and they guided us through all processes and functions. They also advised us on best practices and recommendations for our infrastructure, giving us a tailored solution.”

Cryoserver v Exclaimer Mail Archiver

We asked Alexandre to compare his experience of his new and previous archiving solutions. He says “Cryoserver is much better in several respects:”

• Resource use/optimisation of storage capacity (FJVA use a Linux environment for Cryoserver, which is lightweight and uses far less resource than the Exclaimer solution, freeing up space for other applications)
• A user-friendly web interface
• Easier, faster searching for emails
• Capability to import .PST files
• An audit account option

About our relationship and tech support, he says: “Cryoserver's team is always available and ready to help. We really appreciate working with them.”

And has our solution met his expectations? “Yes, 100%.” This is why FJVA have now decommissioned their old Exclaimer Mail Archiver – Cryoserver performs its role, safeguarding the firm’s emails up to 2020.

Alexandre says he wishes he’d migrated to us sooner and now hopes to use Cryoserver to live-archive all of FJVA’s emails in the future.