One of my small business customers has been growing by leaps and bounds… regularly adding new FTEs and having a steady rotation of interns. When I first starting helping them with their technology needs, simple POP mail was sufficient. But it quickly became clear they were evolving to the point of outgrowing simple POP mail and needed the power of a business class e-mail system, such as MS Exchange. The problem was, they weren’t quite ready for the expense and responsibility that comes with hosting your own Exchange system.
I did some research on Hosted Exchange providers, and soon narrowed down the field to a couple different companies, including HP and Intermedia.net. I decided to go with Intermedia.net because it had a very slick Web-based management tool, called HostPilot, that would give me the ability to manage accounts from virtually any Web browser. Granted, this kind of service is not as cheap as POP mail, but you get all of the great features of a workgroup e-mail system with none of the hassles of managing your own server. I currently have them setup on Intermedia.Net’s Shared Exchange offering, which is fine for now. The basic pricing is $9.95 per month per mailbox (1000mb per mailbox).
The really slick part involves the seamless connectivity between Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003, enabled by Windows 2003 Server’s RPC Proxy Service. The end result is that Outlook 2003 users can connect via HTTP (or HTTPS), bypassing the need for a VPN. In conjunction with Cached mode, the performance is really quite decent. You also get Outlook Web Access and with Exchange Server 2003, the interface is extremely robust. If you know your way around MX records, you can also manage mailboxes for multiple domains. Intermeida.net has some other bells and whistles that could be useful in the future, including Blackberry and Goodlink Wireless services, plus incoming fax-to-Inbox.
It is very true that at some point the cost outlay for hosted Exchange will exceed what it would cost to purchase and host Exchange internally. But cost is a slippery thing. Getting the server and software is the easy part… making sure the server is looked after, patched, and administered correctly is not so easy (or cheap). Perhaps when the business turns another corner and grows to the point of needing a dedicated IT resource, it may be time to reevaluate hosting vs. internal. For now, the flexibility and freedom from hassle that comes with Hosted Exchange makes it an easy decision.
[tags]hosted exchange,fte,ms exchange,hostpilot,workgroup e-mail system[/tags]