CGNET Serves the CGIAR with Email for More Than 20 Years, Including a Record Active Directory Implementation

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organizations, and private foundations. 15 international agricultural centers work with national agricultural research systems and civil society organizations, including the private sector. The alliance mobilizes agricultural science to reduce poverty, foster human well-being, promote agricultural growth, and protect the environment. The CGIAR generates global public goods that are available to all. For more information, visit www.cgiar.org.

The CGIAR produces critical information and farming technologies relevant to the needs of poor farmers in developing countries. Its research on crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, and food policy has resulted in such global achievements as the introduction of new types of maize, rice and wheat that improve health and help developing countries to cut food import costs. CGIAR technologies have helped reduce pesticide use in developing countries, and facilitated the rehabilitation of Afghanistan's agriculture. CGIAR has trained more than 75,000 scientists and researchers in developing countries, and much more.

At the foundation of this world-changing information and knowledge is a vast information and communications technology infrastructure. This infrastructure must enable thousands of the organization's geographically dispersed researchers and scientists to communicate and share information with one another quickly and reliably. What's more, for this dedicated network of researchers, anything that threatens the efficiency and effectiveness of this infrastructure is unacceptable.

That's why the CGIAR began collaborating with CGNET Services International in 1983. Within a year, the CGIAR had moved its inter-center communications from the postal service to electronic mail, reducing by an entire planting season the time needed to share research results among centers.

A Record Active Directory Implementation

CGNET began implementing Microsoft Exchange as soon as it was introduced, and the CGIAR adopted it soon after. Since then, the CGIAR has constantly upgraded its email. Last year, CGNET and the CGIAR completed moving all of its Exchange servers to Active Directory, and by the end of this year all will be running on Exchange 2003. Spanning more than 25 offices on six continents, the Active Directory implementation is likely to have been the most geographically dispersed ever accomplished.

"Timely information is vital for scientists," explains Enrica Porcari, CIO of the CGIAR. "If you were to ask anyone in the CGIAR what the one thing is they would take with them in the event of an evacuation, which occurs in the places we work, they would point to email. They might leave their suitcases but they'd take their email. In fact, when the staff in Bouake, Ivory Coast, returned after being evacuated when the region became engulfed in war, the first thing they demanded was email. It's their lifeline."

CGNET’s Exchange backup services allowed researchers in the Bouake offices of the CGIAR’s Africa Rice Center to continue getting email at other locations after the invasion, and to resume email in their new offices as soon as the offices were ready.

Fighting Spam and Viruses

Spam and virus filtering, based on Symantec's industry-leading products, is a standard part of CGNET’s services to the CGIAR. Porcari adds that the lack of spam-related complaints is another measure of the effectiveness of this solution. "I used to receive complaints about spam, but not anymore. And I can see by the numbers that this solution is catching a lot of spam: between 150,000 and 200,000 per week. So I know that spammers are trying to get through. They just don't have the pleasure of reaching us."