| WHY USE MICROSOFT EXCHANGE? |
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Most small and mid-sized businesses are using email as a primary communication channel with customers, colleagues and suppliers. But many of these companies stop there, missing out on productivity-boosting features like shared calendars, contact information and files.
By upgrading to the world’s most popular business messaging software, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, you can significantly raise your team’s efficiency for a small monthly fee.
Basically, Exchange is a computer server that stores your company’s email, calendars, address books and files centrally, so they are available 24x7 and can be shared among your team, if you wish. It is the messaging system of choice for most Fortune 500 corporations.
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| ADVANCED FEATURES |
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People running Exchange as their email server typically use Microsoft Outlook 2003 as their email ‘client’. Among many advanced features, this lets them:
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Exchange is a quantum leap from basic POP3 or IMAP4 email and makes your team much more productive through constant access to email, calendars and contacts, as well as important files and information.
Basic POP and IMAP e-mail systems, which are currently used for accessing email, are more suited to home and personal user, rather than business, and were never designed to include the broader, richer collaborative tools that Exchange has made possible.
Now that hosted Exchange is available for no upfront cost, with low monthly fees, smaller and mid-sized companies are increasingly realizing the instant competitive advantage that Exchange can give them. |
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Outlook/Exchange 2003 vs Basic Email
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To help you understand the productivity-boosting options that Exchange offers, here is a comparison of Outlook/Exchange 2003 versus basic email options:
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Exchange Server 2003
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POP 3 /
IMAP4
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Group scheduling
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ü
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û
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Send out meeting requests, then track and update them
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ü
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û
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Shared calendars and side-by-side calendar views
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ü
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û
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Access to personal and shared address books from remote locations
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ü
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û
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Outlook single sign-on for email and network access
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ü
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û
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Outlook connections over the Internet are secure
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ü
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Some solutions
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Server-side spam filtering
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ü
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Some solutions
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Put multicolored flags next to emails as a reminder to follow up
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ü
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Partial
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Ability to add voting buttons to a messages
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ü
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û
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Automatic out-of-office reply
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ü
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û
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Ability to recall sent messages
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ü
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û
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Support for multiple-computer access
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ü
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Partial
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Access to email via Web browsers and mobile browsers, Outlook Mobile in Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs, Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphones
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ü
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Non-Microsoft products are typically required
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Outlook Cached Exchange Mode for working with intermittent Web connection (eg dial-up)
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ü
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Some solutions offer caching
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Offline email, calendar, contacts, and public folder support
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ü
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Partial
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Access to public folders for sharing documents and information
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ü
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Individual email folder access in IMAP
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Basic email support for SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4
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ü
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ü
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Easy management of Outlook and Exchange Server profiles across multiple machines to lower support costs
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ü
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û
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| WHAT IS HOSTED EXCHANGE? |
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Email, collaboration and scheduling tools have become critical factors to the success of any business. Unfortunately, small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) often lack a large IT budget or in-house team to implement and maintain the sophisticated messaging software they need. Yet SMBs need this critical toolset in order to succeed in the marketplace.
WE HAVE A BETTER SOLUTION
Microsoft Exchange Server is used by the majority of large corporations for their email, calendars, contacts and files. The Exchange server powers the full collaboration functions of Microsoft Outlook, such as group calendars, contacts and file-sharing. We provide the latest version of this as a hosted service.
SMBs can subscribe to this on-demand service for a low monthly fee – instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars upfront for expensive servers and software licenses, hiring specialist IT staff to install and maintain the system and being responsible for a 24x7 infrastructure. We let you focus on your core business.
Hosted Microsoft Exchange means that we provide all hardware and software, then run and maintain it for you in a tier-1 datacenter. You pay a low monthly fee, and can access your email using Outlook® or Entourage® on your desktop, Outlook Web Access (OWA) in any Web browser, or wirelessly from a device like the BlackBerry or Treo.
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| WHAT IS INCLUDED WITH HOSTED EXCHANGE? |
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Hosted Exchange from [COMPANY NAME]
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In-house Exchange and IT staff
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Software licenses
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ü
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û
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Enterprise-grade hardware
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ü
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û
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24x7 support
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Unlikely
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Uptime guarantee
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ü
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û
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Tier-1 data center with redundant power, cooling and network connections
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ü
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û
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Regular backup
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ü
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Possibly
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Anti-virus, anti-spam
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ü
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Possibly
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Wireless options
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ü
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Separate licenses and servers needed
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| WHY HOST MICROSOFT EXCHANGE WITH US? |
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When looking to implement or outsource Microsoft Exchange, there are several key factors to consider. Is the service reliable? Are there engineers on standby 24x7 in case a server goes down? And does the service offer the full benefits of Exchange?
RELIABILITY AND UPTIME
Our service operates out of a tier-one datacenter, with state-of-the-art cooling, power supply, backup generator and fire suppressants. For you this means that your email is constantly running. Your Exchange service will run on clustered servers and an EMC storage area network – so if one server or disk drive stops working, your email keeps working.
As well as offering the highest-quality IT infrastructure, we do nightly backups to protect your data. For your peace of mind, we offer a 99.9% service-level agreement (SLA) which allows for just a few minutes of email downtime each month.
24/7 monitoring and management
To further ensure reliability, we employ a team of Microsoft Exchange engineers and administrators 24/7. So if a server problem occurs at 3am on a Sunday morning, we will be there to solve it – in a matter of minutes. This same team installs Microsoft software patches immediately, as well as anti-virus and anti-spam updates, for full protection.
Add-on features
We offer a complete range of add-on features. For instance, hosted BlackBerry and GoodLink (for Treos and other devices), so you can instantly activate email service for your handheld. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on your own server, you can use our managed service for just a few dollars a month.
You can also add archiving – from simple message journaling, to keep an exact copy of all your message, to compliant archiving, which fulfils regulatory requirements from the SEC, NASD, HIPAA and so on. Also available is fax via email, which gives you a local fax number and emails your faxes to you as PDFs.
PC or MAC
Many Exchange hosting companies do not offer both Outlook 2003 (for PC) and Entourage 2004 (for Mac) support. We offer a free download of both, so your staff can use either PCs and Macs, or both.
Our Microsoft Exchange hosting service is fully-managed, with constant uptime and instant add-ons like BlackBerry or archiving. All this, plus a significantly lower total cost of ownership than managing an Exchange server in-house.
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| HOSTED EXCHANGE ADD-ON SERVICES |
One huge benefit of hosted Exchange is the range of simple and cost-effective add-on services. Where companies with in-house Exchange face huge IT management difficulties, hosted Exchange makes these headaches disappear.
BLACKBERRY
Running a BlackBerry Enterprise Server is difficult and expensive – so leave it to the experts. Our hosted Exchange includes an instant BlackBerry option, where you pay a low monthly fee and we handle everything, so it just works. You get BlackBerry service fully integrated with your company’s Exchange email, with zero management or upfront costs required.
GOODLINK
GoodLink is a great alternative to BlackBerry. With a wide choice of devices, including the popular Treo, it gives your staff real-time synchronized access to their email, calendars, contacts and information. With no management required, unleash your company’s productivity for just a few dollars per month.
ANTI-SPAM
As well as the full anti-virus included with hosted Exchange, our optional anti-spam feature will shield your employees from almost all spam email – and make them more productive. Monitored and updated 24x7, it is an enormous advantage over running an in-house Exchange server.
ARCHIVING
We offer the ability to ‘turn on’ archiving instantly. You can choose either basic archiving, which simply keeps a mirrored copy of your data, or advanced archiving, which keeps an offsite copy of all data and ensures the archive is compliant with major financial, healthcare and other regulations.
FAX VIA EMAIL
Get a local fax number and receive all your faxes as PDF email attachments.
DISK SPACE
With our fully-managed hosted Exchange service, there is no need for complex hardware upgrades and downtime. As your company mailboxes grow larger in size, just add extra capacity instantly for a low monthly fee.
Hosted Exchange gives your business cost-effective, enterprise-grade email on demand – plus add-on services previously available only to large corporations. |
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| OUR HOSTED EXCHANGE DATACENTER |
When you host your business-critical email system with [COMPANY NAME], your email and data will be hosted in one of the world’s premiere datacenters. It includes all the latest technology in server, data connectivity, power, cooling, security and infrastructure.
ENVIRONMENT
The datacenter is equipped with the latest environmental control units that give a 100% SLA-guaranteed temperature and humidity within a certain range. It also uses the most advanced fire-suppression systems available. The datacenter has an 18-inch raised floor and is zone 4 certified for earthquakes.
POWER
With main power supplied by Silicon Valley Power, in the top-quartile nationally in reliability rankings, our class-A data center is designed for N+1 redundancy and is equipped with redundant power feeds, HiTEC uninterruptible power supply systems and back-up diesel generator power. This gives a guaranteed 99.99% availability for power.
CONNECTIVITY
A carrier-neutral facility with two diverse network entry points and gives you a direct Internet backbone connection. Failover arrangements ensure that data connectivity never goes down. With our hosted Exchange, you always have reliable access to your server, both from your desktop or via Outlook Web Access wherever you travel.
SECURITY
As a world-class datacenter, our premises are closely monitored and guarded, 24x7x365. Sophisticated pan/tilt CCTV cameras cover every part of the datacenter and access to our servers is restricted to a limited number of authorized engineers.
Security is strictly enforced using the very latest technology, including man-trap technology between lobby and datacenter, motion sensors and controlled ID key-cards, as well as security guards stationed at every entrance to the site. |
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| OUR HOSTED EXCHANGE ENVIRONMENT |
Our Exchange environment is built for constant uptime and the highest reliability. Using the latest Microsoft best practices for running Exchange, the system includes complete redundancy – with no single points of failure – across our network, servers and data connectivity. In fact, our hosted Exchange is far more robust than the email servers at many major corporations.
SERVERS & STORAGE
Our Exchange servers are based on a passive-active cluster server configuration to provide seamless failover when a cluster node is unavailable or is taken offline for maintenance. Redundant and load-balanced Exchange front-end servers also increase reliability.
Your data resides on a storage area network (SAN) by EMC, the premiere storage brand. With total redundancy – clusters of disks in a RAID array – if one should fail, the system continues working. Intra-SAN and tape back-ups ensure there is no single point of failure anywhere in the storage system.
NETWORK
Our highly-resilient network has two diverse network entry points which manage traffic flow to the Internet, with another dedicated high-speed link to a separate California location. That second location itself has a failover link to a third location nearby for ultimate uptime in connectivity.
Traffic inside the Exchange environment is managed by Cisco routers and switches, with HP rack distribution switches. An advanced Netscreen firewall protects the [COMPANY NAME] Exchange infrastructure, with all ports closed except for essential ones and 100% of incoming traffic monitored by anti-spam and anti-virus applications.
24x7 MONITORING
Exchange servers are monitored 24x7 using a comprehensive and state-of-the-art MOM management system. This allows immediate detection of both potential and actual issues, which are tackled by our multiple technicians – on standby, day and night. MOM looks at a full range of metrics, including CPU, memory and disk space utilization, the size of the mail queues, the status of Outlook Web Access (OWA), different Exchange-related ports and RPC latency. |
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