hosted exchange | Small Business Tech Tips

In todays’ world, everything is going to the “cloud”. Well email is in fact following the same trend. More and more you are probably hearing about hosted email. Well I am here to provide you a little bit of information on that topic.

As like anything else out there, there are positives and negatives. First off, let’s talk about the positives as that list is longer.
With a hosted solution, you do not have to worry about purchasing, managing, or up keeping a physical server. The price
to purchase a server is not cheap, and hiring someone to manage is can also get pricey as well. With hosted exchange, you are only responsible for paying for what you use. There is a flat fee per user that is a monthly reoccurrence.

Another benefit goes a long with that. If you have hosted exchange, the company that it is provided through provides support either on a contract or fee based offering. This means that if you do not have an IT guy, you will not have to get one.

A third benefit is the uptime guarantee that they provide. With it being hosted, you will not have to worry about your email server going down. The companies offering hosted exchange rarely have downtime and if they do, it is for a brief time for maintenance. Also, you mail is readily available as you will have an online portal that every user can sign in to if they are not on a computer where their outlook is configured.

Finally, a pro of hosted exchange is the security. Having databases directly responsible for hosting millions of customers email, you know that the security has to be top notch. That alone gives a piece of mind that your information will not get compromised.

Now let’s move on to the negatives. Honestly, the only negative that I have come across, is the outsourcing. When a product like this is utilized, the people doing the support for it are usually outsourced. What does this mean exactly? Well your call may be outed to another country and also, IT professionals are let go since it is more expensive to have someone working directly for you.

That all being said, hosted exchange is a great option for the technology age these days. If you have any questions or you feel that hosted exchange may be an option for you and your company, please contact Everon at (888)244-1748.

September 4, 2012 Austin Leach

It’s time to throw a retirement party for Exchange 2003!

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Exchange Server 2003 came into this world on September 28, 2003. It brought with it a host of new features, including improved migration tools to ease the transition from older versions of Exchange, enhanced heuristic message filtering to help direct spam into the Junk folder, and, if you had Service Pack 2 installed, a database size limit of 75 gigabytes. This was unimaginably large for the time.

That was eight years and eleven months ago. In that time, we have also seen Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 come into the mix as well. If your organization is still running Exchange Server 2003, here are some reasons why it is time to upgrade.

Microsoft created a handy chart to break down the differences between Exchange Server versions.
Modern desktop mail clients like Outlook 2010, Outlook for Mac 2011, and Apple Mail all require Exchange Server 2007 or later, and they won’t talk to Exchange Server 2003 at all. So if you get a new Windows machine with the latest version of Office or one of those shiny new Macs, those users will be stuck using Outlook Web Access webmail to access email, calendars, and contacts.
Outlook Web Access on Exchange Server 2003 forces browsers other than Internet Explorer to use “Light” mode, which just means that many of the features and options beyond simple sending and receiving email are disabled or invisible to anyone running a different browser (such as Firefox, Chrome, or anyone on a shiny new Mac).
The 75 gigabyte size limit I mentioned before applies only to Exchange Server 2003 Standard, but there is a lot more email being sent today than there was 9 years ago. It does not take very many users with large mailboxes to hit that size limit, and when you do Exchange Server 2003 will shut itself off to prevent database corruption or data loss. That means no more email until the size of the database is reduced. The newer versions of Exchange Server do not have this limitation.
If the software package is nearly 9 years old, chances are that the hardware running it is on its last legs too. While it might be running just fine, it is most likely out of warranty and may even be in End Of Life status, making replacement parts hard to find, making disaster recover more difficult, and increasing costs and downtime.
The prospect of replacing an Exchange server can be a daunting one, costing many thousands of dollars. One way to avoid this expense and to simplify your office network is migrating to a hosted Exchange system in the cloud instead. By getting rid of your old office server, your business can keep running if there is an internet service failure or power outage in your building. Take a look at Everon’s own cloud email and business continuity solutions.

If you are considering retiring your old server hardware running Exchange Server 2003, there has never been a better time. And Everon can help you do it. Call us at 888-244-1748 if you have questions about server migrations or our cloud email solutions.

December 14, 2011 Curtis Kelley 1

Hosted Exchange – Is it right for your small business?

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It wasn’t that long ago small businesses had pretty limited choices when choosing an email solution: Either host your own Microsoft Exchange server or find a POP email provider. While a POP solution is cheaper it has many limitations and is missing a couple important features critical to most businesses: no shared calendar/contacts and very difficult to keep multiple devices synced. In the past, if these features were important to your business then you needed to purchase and maintain an in house exchange server, which can be a huge financial strain due to the initial investment and maintenance.

With the cost of high bandwidth connections declining in recent years, along with huge strides in the world of cloud computing other options have become more viable for small businesses, specifically hosted exchange. What exactly is this you may ask? Hosted Exchange allows all the benefits of owning your own exchange server without the high cost and hassle of keeping it onsite. By hosting exchange on the cloud you pay someone else to host and maintain your email system, alleviating your company from the hassle and financial burden.

There are several pros to hosted Exchange but also need to consider some cons as well:

Pros
• Get the benefits of an in house exchange server such as shared calendars/contacts and ease of syncing multiple devices (work PC, home PC, webmail, phone, etc)
• No need to purchase hardware/licensing or maintain an in house email server
• Can still access email even if office internet goes out (such as from home or your phone)
• Email is automatically backed up by provider.
• Spam filtering is included.

Cons
• Monthly hosting fee. This varies by provider and what special features you may want. Usually for companies under 20-30 people this monthly fee will cheaper in the long term compared to having your own email server.
• Increased bandwidth usage. Depending on your current ISP speed this may not be a problem but can be typically upgraded if needed.

In summary, if you are a small business with less than 20-30 employees I highly recommend looking into hosted exchange. Ask your IT provider if this is the right solution for you or visit Everonit.com for more information http://www.everonit.com/it_hosting_email_and_apps.html

Thank you,

Curt Kelley

June 22, 2011 Everon TechTips 1

Hosted Exchange vs. an Email Server

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In my work, I’m often asked by clients if they should set up their own email server and manage it or have it managed in the cloud and pay monthly fees to do so. This is an excellent question with no one answer for all businesses. The real answer is, what works best for your business is what you should go with.

Here are some things to think about when trying to decide.

1) Infrastructure - if you have your own email server then you’re going to need to invest in a server. You’re going to have to care for that server as you would any other. It must be in a place that doesn’t get too warm and always has a supply of electricity. You’ll need a UPS to keep it running when the power goes out for a few minutes and contingency plans if it should ever stop working.

2) Backup - In addition to the server, you’ll need backup software that is aware of your email server’s specific database. You’ll also need a place to store those backups such as tapes or USB drives. You will also need a backup and disaster recovery plan which would include your keeping a copy of your backed up data in a location not too close to where your server is stored.

3) Availability - If you host your own email server then you’re going to have to make sure that it’s always reachable. Email has entered the realm of mission critical in most organizations. To have it be unavailable will cause some or all of your staff great angst. You’ll need to make sure that it’s sitting on a very reliable Internet connection and that it’s running on a server with redundancy built in so that if any one component of the server breaks down, the email is still functional.

4) Anti Virus - You’ll need a good corporate based anti virus solution. Even if your email is running in a non-Windows environment, you’ll still need this to prevent viruses from spreading to your users or their recipients.

5) Spam concerns - You’ll have to take spam controls very seriously. If your server is flagged by others as a spammer, then some of your email will be refused by a large portion of recipients. There are databases of known spammers and many companies subscribe to these lists. If your company’s server is on the list - your email won’t get through.

6) Supporting Smart Phones - If you want to do more than just have emails delivered to your user’s Balckberrys (i.e. contact and calendar synching) then you are going to have to install some additional software by the makers of Blackberrys. This software known as a BES Server. Depending on how many users in your organization, you may be able to download the software for free. This is something you’ll have to explore with RIM.

The alternatives to all of the above is to use a hosted service. Because of the overhead involved, many of our clients opt for a hosted solution and its relatively low monthly fee per mailbox. This fee takes care of all of the above issues for them. Some figure that they’re not in the business of running an email server and would rather outsource the function rather than manage it themselves. For some clients, they already have an infrastructure capable of handling one more server and opt to simply invest up front and avoid the recurring charges.

Again, there is no right or wrong answer. It is just a matter of what you prefer and what works for your business.