Hosted Exchange and Microsoft Office 365

E-mail is a service that has had a seamless and successful transition into the cloud.

What is Hosted Exchange?

Hosted Exchange moves your e-mail server from on-premise hardware into one of many distributed data centers.  This shared infrastructure will leverage best-in-breed hardware to maximize performance, security, and stability.  While the back-end infrastructure is enhanced, the user experience will be nearly identical. Workers will still access e-mail through Outlook, making it a seamless transition for the user.

What is Microsoft Office 365?

Microsoft Office 365 is Microsoft’s branded version of their cloud suite.  One component is a Hosted Exchange feature.  Beyond Exchange, you can also purchase varying levels of the service to include the Microsoft Office product suite.  This suite guarantees that your company always has access to the latest software releases from Microsoft.

What are the benefits of Hosted Exchange?

• Business Continuity:  Most small-to-medium businesses house their server infrastructure in a single, vulnerable location.  While this is normally sufficient, there is an inherit risk to this approach.  By leveraging multiple Tier III or IV data centers – which are secure and equipped with multiple power and carrier sources – Hosted Exchange can provide an additional level of resiliency.  You will no longer lose your services if you lose power.  Companies can also avoid suffering business-critical loss of email access in the event of a catastrophic disaster.
• Eliminate Capital Expenses:  There is no need to purchase servers, license software, plan for future expenses, or spend weeks preparing for an upgrade.  Instead, email services can be delivered via a predictable, consistent, per-user, monthly cost.
• Risk Mitigation:  What’s the cost of losing e-mail for an extended period of time?  Hosted Exchange can mitigate the risk of a hardware failure crippling your organization by providing more redundancy than a classic on-premise solution.
• Scalability:  User counts can be adjusted seamlessly on a month-by-month basis by simply adding additional licenses.  Don’t be constrained by hardware limitations that sometime suppress growth in the classic computing models.
• Unlimited Flexibility / Remote Connectivity:  Since email is hosted in the cloud, users can seamlessly gain access from any location that has internet access.  Users are not required to be on a physical LAN or connect to the main office through a VPN connection.
• Regular Feature Upgrades: Hosted Exchange offerings provide continual upgrades to the latest version of Exchange.  This is done behind the scenes for any users.  Furthermore, with Office 365, users will always have access to the latest version of Microsoft Office.