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New technology can assist mining exploration companies

18th October 2013

By: Anine Kilian

Contributing Editor Online

  

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S oftware services company Mimecast, which specialises in unified email management, reports that its Large File Sending email software has enjoyed significant interest since being introduced to the market in July.

The software, a cloud-based sending service that can assist mining exploration companies in remote areas to send data-intensive confidential files and emails from secluded locations, enables end-users to send large files using a secure, centrally managed service, which ensures compliance with enterprise policy without interrupting existing business workflow.

“Mimecast’s Large File Sending software lightens the load on email servers and other information technology (IT) infrastructure. It provides an easy-to-use, securely tracked and protected service that enables enterprise content sharing while eliminating risk,” says Mimecast customer service director Christelle Hicklin.

“It enables a mining exploration company to protect its information with data-leak prevention policies and removes the impact of large attachments on email infrastructure,” she adds.

Hicklin notes that securely sending large files using email is a significant challenge, particularly from a remote location, and has become a battleground between users and IT departments.

“Seeking to protect overall email system performance, IT teams routinely set limits on email size – but file sizes are becoming larger, particularly in the mining and mining exploration sectors, which means that users often struggle to share vital content with internal and external contacts,” she says.

Hicklin states that, as a result, users inevitably try to bypass corporate gateways – turning to consumer applications to send and share large file content.

“However, these services often lack policy enforcement or content checking, and even fewer archive emails and attachments for discovery and retrieval at a later date – they compromise enterprise compliance and expose companies to risk.”

She notes that the company’s Large File Sending technology enables more storage space for messages within mailbox quotas and set policies to avoid attachments of any size from routing through or being stored in mailboxes.

“The technology also reduces email storage growth, with perpetual links for archiving, and customers and users can elect to receive download notifications while sharing large files of up to two gigabytes,” she points out.

Meanwhile, Hicklin states that, owing to the economic pre-ssures currently placed on the South African mining, exploration and manufacturing sectors, many companies are forming mergers and implementing cost-cutting policies, which impact on their respective IT providers.

“As these industries start adopting more efficient and accessible technologies for everyday IT management, the knock-on effect will be an appetite to start consuming and understanding the analytics components that come with improved data management,” she says.

She adds that taking unstructured data and turning it into valuable business analytics is a bigger challenge, but one in which Mimecast can assist by showing data relationships within these companies and providing the tools to consume the data in a more logical and structured fashion – on any device, at any time, in any location.

“For these reasons, it is critical that chief information officers (CIOs) hone their strategies to target key IT requirements, which involves the improvement of technologies and data within the IT environment.

Another key asset that can help companies in these industries survive is a set of flexible and innovative partners willing to work with their customers towards solutions, and this is what the CIO should be asking when evaluating different options that enable the organisation to move forward,” explains Hicklin.

She states that, when it comes to IT, one cannot ignore other economic pressures in the mining exploration industry, as these have a knock-on effect on surrounding industries and put a lot of pressure on management to cut costs.

“Because IT is not a core focus of mining exploration, it will feel pressure first from a cost-cutting perspective.

CIOs in mining exploration companies need to become more aware of the type of technology they are investing in and how it may or may not service the business’s needs. There is a lot of pressure for these officers to catch up with other industries regarding up-to-date IT,” Hicklin states.

She adds that the company works with many diverse mining houses in terms of a global footprint, and the subsequent challenges, from an IT management perspective, entail information officers having to start consolidating and centralising the management of their IT services.

“It is becoming more relevant for exploration companies to look at technology that resides in the cloud so that they can have centralised management and remove the demand on people who are not necessarily skilled enough,” Hicklin says.

She adds that, the only saving grace in vastly dispersed exploration sites is an Internet connection.

“It makes sense to find services that you can provide from the cloud and provide those same services for the entire company,” she concludes.

Edited by Megan van Wyngaardt
Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

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