Microsoft Online Services

[Azure]

Anyone use them?

Unless I'm completely misreading their prices, they offer Exchange with 25GB of storage per mailbox at $5/month/mailbox.

Which would be about 100x better than anyone else. Rackspace can't even come close to those prices.

Surely there has to be a catch.

[Barnes]

Have you looked at Enterprise Gmail? I think it's $50 a year/user for 25GB.

[Azure]

I use the free version of Gmail, with the docs, calender, etc, etc and I love it.

But I have an Android phone which is specifically setup for a streamlined approach to syncing everything with Google services.

Is the blackberry/iphone the same way? Trying to convince people to use Gmail, even with an enterprise version is pretty tough if they're already doing everything through Outlook and they already use an exchange server, but its just hosted locally.

[Barnes]

Should be no problem to continue using Outlook.

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com...ogle-apps.html

iPhone and Google products work just as well as they do on an Android phone. (For now)

Don't know about Blackberry.

[Azure]

interesting. I'll look into that.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by Azure

interesting. I'll look into that.

I'm not endorsing Google, just an option.

[Azure]

Yeah I know.

Question though. According to this...

http://blogs.blackberry.com/2010/03/...ked-questions/

Its free now. Or am I missing something? I thought RIM was charging thousands of dollars for this. And now its free?

Or is it even needed? Say someone wanted to sync his blackberry with an exchange server?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Azure

Yeah I know.

Question though. According to this...

http://blogs.blackberry.com/2010/03/...ked-questions/

Its free now. Or am I missing something? I thought RIM was charging thousands of dollars for this. And now its free?

Or is it even needed? Say someone wanted to sync his blackberry with an exchange server?

BES Express is fantastic for small and medium sized businesses. The BES software needed to do calendar/contact/mail sync to Exchange used to cost thousands of dollars up front, plus a per-device license fee. Now, there’s none of that.

You can even run BES Express on your Exchange server (which previously was a no-no), so you don’t even have to spring for another server if you don’t want to.

Highly recommended - so far I haven’t seen any issues with it, handling 7 BB’s for an Exchange 2007 environment.

[Azure]

Ah okay.

Reason I'm asking is I'm trying to figure out whether it would be a better idea to setup my own exchange server, or if it would be a better idea to go with someone like this...

http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange

The problem with Sherweb is that they charge you $10/user/month to do Blackberry sync. On top of the $8.95/user/month for exchange. Technically, with Telus I wouldn't even need the blackberry sync service, as they have it setup so you can sync any email through their service. I tried it today and it worked great.

I like the idea of not having to worry about the technical side of the Exchange server though.

Choices, choices...

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Azure

Ah okay.

Reason I'm asking is I'm trying to figure out whether it would be a better idea to setup my own exchange server, or if it would be a better idea to go with someone like this...

http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange

The problem with Sherweb is that they charge you $10/user/month to do Blackberry sync. On top of the $8.95/user/month for exchange. Technically, with Telus I wouldn't even need the blackberry sync service, as they have it setup so you can sync any email through their service. I tried it today and it worked great.

I like the idea of not having to worry about the technical side of the Exchange server though.

Choices, choices...

Are you considering running a server at home/home office? Microsoft has a tremendous program via TechNet where for about $250 a year, you get licensed access to all of their operating systems, business and office software. It’s a great way to get exposure to Server 2008, Exchange, SQL, Active Directory, etc.

It’s not for production use, but if you are a one man shop, or just looking to learn and use these techs for your personal use, it’s a heck of a deal (even just to get Windows 7 and Office 2010 for your home machine)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...s/default.aspx

It’s a fair bit of work to put up the full Exchange stack, but once you have it up and running, its pretty much self-maintaining. I don’t do much to my server at home other than back it up once a week, and even that is easy since I run it in a virtual machine - I just take a copy of the virtual machine and away I go.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

BES Express is fantastic for small and medium sized businesses. The BES software needed to do calendar/contact/mail sync to Exchange used to cost thousands of dollars up front, plus a per-device license fee. Now, there’s none of that.

You can even run BES Express on your Exchange server (which previously was a no-no), so you don’t even have to spring for another server if you don’t want to.

Highly recommended - so far I haven’t seen any issues with it, handling 7 BB’s for an Exchange 2007 environment.

I am currently setting up a BES Express test box at work while the funding for an actual server goes through.

You say that you have no problems running w/ exchange? I seem to recall that the research I did indicated that running with Exchange is a bad idea. Maybe it was because our Exchange is part of SBS (and I think BES hates DCs). Any insight you might have into that would be awesome.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Are you considering running a server at home/home office? Microsoft has a tremendous program via TechNet where for about $250 a year, you get licensed access to all of their operating systems, business and office software. It’s a great way to get exposure to Server 2008, Exchange, SQL, Active Directory, etc.

It’s not for production use, but if you are a one man shop, or just looking to learn and use these techs for your personal use, it’s a heck of a deal (even just to get Windows 7 and Office 2010 for your home machine)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...s/default.aspx

It’s a fair bit of work to put up the full Exchange stack, but once you have it up and running, its pretty much self-maintaining. I don’t do much to my server at home other than back it up once a week, and even that is easy since I run it in a virtual machine - I just take a copy of the virtual machine and away I go.

Yep, I already have that. Great service. We're also a Microsoft Partner, so we get all the software for minimal costs.

I'm trying to figure out what the best choice would be Exchange wise for a business that has about 15 users. Whether I should go with the cloud solution, or if I should setup my own server.

The only issue I have would be the blackberry sync. Cloud solution costs me extra to do blackberry sync. Pretty good extra too. My own version of Exchange I could do it for free.

But, I want online backups of all my emails. Which I can't do with 1and1(our host). So my other option would be to use rackspace for emails, use their email backup system, and use my own exchange server.

Just a few ideas I've gone through. I'm just trying to make it as automated as possible. Exchange, email and backup. And I love the security of cloud. But not the cost.

Gah.

[photon]

There's got to be lower cost solutions out there, it's not like what you are wanting to do is uncommon at all.

Setting up an Exchange server for 15 users seems like asking to be beaten with a stick for fun.

EDIT: I've become a big proponent of getting services or experts for things that need them. One project I'm working on is getting a huge # of downloads and we're all of a sudden sending out six digits emails every month.. Sorry, but I really don't want to be a sendmail expert or know the ins and outs of keeping off spam blacklists (even though our subscribers downloaded an app, and clicked through TWO things accepting the terms of service, we still get people that are mad when we send them an email for a service they requested). So instead just get an SMTP service that I can use that generates reports, maintains the servers, etc. Done.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

There's got to be lower cost solutions out there, it's not like what you are wanting to do is uncommon at all.

Setting up an Exchange server for 15 users seems like asking to be beaten with a stick for fun.

EDIT: I've become a big proponent of getting services or experts for things that need them. One project I'm working on is getting a huge # of downloads and we're all of a sudden sending out six digits emails every month.. Sorry, but I really don't want to be a sendmail expert or know the ins and outs of keeping off spam blacklists (even though our subscribers downloaded an app, and clicked through TWO things accepting the terms of service, we still get people that are mad when we send them an email for a service they requested). So instead just get an SMTP service that I can use that generates reports, maintains the servers, etc. Done.

15 users is probably right on the low end of when you start to look at Exchange, in my experience, because that’s when you have enough scheduling complexity to start to need the calendaring aspect of Exchange.

And yeah, you probably don’t want to be doing Exchange in house for that low a user count, if its not your company’s core competency. That’s what you get people like me (or rather, my employer) to do

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I am currently setting up a BES Express test box at work while the funding for an actual server goes through.

You say that you have no problems running w/ exchange? I seem to recall that the research I did indicated that running with Exchange is a bad idea. Maybe it was because our Exchange is part of SBS (and I think BES hates DCs). Any insight you might have into that would be awesome.

It’s explicitly stated that co-existence on Exchange servers is supported. I’ve tested it and it works fine (32bit or 64 bit, another nice improvement from previous versions of BES).

It also runs fine on a domain controller - the only issue there is that your BES service account needs to be a domain admin account, which RIM doesn’t want you to do following the principle of least privilege. You could probably fine tune the user rights assignments for the BES admin account via the domain controller group policy, but I don’t think that much extra effort is really warranted for the exposure that BES represents (which is basically none)

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It’s explicitly stated that co-existence on Exchange servers is supported. I’ve tested it and it works fine (32bit or 64 bit, another nice improvement from previous versions of BES).

It also runs fine on a domain controller - the only issue there is that your BES service account needs to be a domain admin account, which RIM doesn’t want you to do following the principle of least privilege. You could probably fine tune the user rights assignments for the BES admin account via the domain controller group policy, but I don’t think that much extra effort is really warranted for the exposure that BES represents (which is basically none)

Awesome info.

Will make my life a lot easier.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by photon

There's got to be lower cost solutions out there, it's not like what you are wanting to do is uncommon at all.

Setting up an Exchange server for 15 users seems like asking to be beaten with a stick for fun.

EDIT: I've become a big proponent of getting services or experts for things that need them.

The more I look at it, the more I agree.

I don't want to do what would be essentially wasting time setting up an Exchange server for about 10 users, where only half them use the calender and the contact list. The rest just email.

I'd rather go with a hosted solution.

So my question is, from what I understand, Exchange downloads a cached copy of all your emails onto the computer, and whenever something changes on the server(new email)...it changes on your computer too. You delete an email, it gets deleted on the server too. Your computer crashes and you lose all your emails, as soon as you reinstall, setup Outlook, all your emails on the server get downloaded onto your computer, etc, etc. Is this the same with the calender/contacts? Is there an actual copy of everything on your computer? Or does your computer always go to the server and take that information? I would think not.

Reason I'm asking is because our internet, like any other internet can go down at times, and if I'm using a hosted solution, I would still prefer to have access to my contacts, be able to write drafts, look at the calender, have access to my inbox, etc, etc. I would want that functionality for all our computers.

[photon]

Yeah for Outlook it keeps a copy of everything in the PST file I believe, it even has (or had years ago when I used it anyway) an offline mode built right in. So as you say if it's offline everything in the PST file is still available, and changes are uploaded/downloaded when contact is reestablished.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah for Outlook it keeps a copy of everything in the PST file I believe, it even has (or had years ago when I used it anyway) an offline mode built right in. So as you say if it's offline everything in the PST file is still available, and changes are uploaded/downloaded when contact is reestablished.

Correct. It’s actually kept in an .OST file, which is separate from the PST files used for offline mail storage (for example to archive old email locally rather than use up storage on the Exchange server).

The .OST file can be deleted and rebuilt at any time - it sucks down everything from the Exchange server when it is re-created.

[FanIn80]

I've managed an Exchange server for as little as 12 people before. It's not that hard. The setup is a bit over-the-top, but once it's up and running, everything else is cake.

Edit: The Exchange-built OST (not PST) is used to store your off-line sync. You can actually disable that so Outlook only works in live mode. There are pros and cons to this, of course. One of the pros is the security side. If someone steals your box, they don't have a local mail store to root through. Mind you, with system-drive encryption tools nowadays, it's not that big of a deal anymore. Just encrypt the entire drive and turn on off-line sync.

Edit: It's important to note the difference between OST and PST. OST is used for off-line sync when connected to an Exchange service. PST is a personal mail store, used for regular mail services such as POP and IMAP. Also, like Scott mentioned, for archives performed from within Outlook (even if connected to an Exchange service).