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What is Exchange Hosting?
Microsoft Exchange Hosted email is for businesses or individuals who use email to send lots of data back and forth, or for companies with a number of employees, who need to be able to work while on the road, and easily collaborate with people still in the home office. In either scenario, simple email clients like Outlook Express are not going to suffice.
Microsoft Hosted Exchange’s major features consist of electronic mail, calendaring, contacts and tasks; support for mobile and web-based access to information; and support for data storage.
As the name implies, these services are "hosted" on a remote server, ie: the cloud, but provides much more disk space per email box, so that large attachments can be handled much more easily and also allows users to then be able to sync accounts across many different devices. Microsoft Exchange not only provides business grade email management tools at client-server level, it acts as a productivity console for users that are looking to collaborate within a set infrastructure.
Developed as a complex tool meant for businesses with at least a certain number of employees, the Exchange Server needs to be installed on dedicated servers. Message Disk has set up the hardware and software required for running a Hosted Exchange environment, so that you don't have to.
Message Disk provides Microsoft Exchange Hosting so that clients can take advantage of the many features of Exchange email, calendar and contacts without the costs of in-house IT. Benefits of the Exchange server include:
- Data in the cloud
- Decreases cost of backups
- Outsourced management to hosting company reduces in-house costs
- Increases efficiency of employees on the move
- Creates a searchable database of information.
Email mailboxes. Each user gets 200-1000 MB of mailbox storage (depending on your plan) and the ability to send attachments up to 25 megabytes (MB).
Outlook support. Users can connect to their copies of Microsoft Outlook 2007 or later to Exchange Online, making it easy for them to use the rich client application they know and use every day.
Web-based access. For Web-client access, Outlook Web App provides a premium browser-based experience that matches the look and feel of the full Outlook client.
Mobility. Mobile access is available from all phones capable of receiving e-mail, including Windows Phone, the iPhone, Android, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry devices.
Shared calendar and contacts. Users can compare calendars to schedule meetings with Exchange Online and have access to collaboration features like shared calendars, groups, global address list, external contacts, tasks, conference rooms, and delegation.
If your business is predominantly Microsoft on the software front, then it makes a lot of sense to use Exchange as it seamlessly works with all Microsoft products and you are likely to get good quality support for it as well. But Microsoft Exchange works on any platform.
One of the key benefits in the new versions (specifically after Version 2007) of Exchange Server is the ability to integrate mobile-based emails for business users.
Last Updated on: Oct 24, 2012 (Permalink)
Category: General Information,
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