Why Microsoft Exchange?
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 2007, 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.

Advanced Features
People running Exchange as their email server typically use Microsoft Outlook 2003 as their email ‘client’. Among many advanced features, this lets them:
• Securely access email remotely via the Web or a mobile device like a BlackBerry or Treo
• View colleagues’ up-to-date calendars and schedule meetings
• Assign and manage company tasks on central ‘to do’ lists
• Manage contact information of employees and customers and access it anytime
• Share documents across the team so everyone’s working from the most current version 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 email 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.

Outlook/Exchange 2007 vs. Basic Email
Features not present in a Basic Email available in Microsoft Exchange:
• Group scheduling; Send out meeting requests, then track and update them;
• Shared calendars and side-by-side calendar views;
• Access to personal and shared address books from remote locations;
• Outlook single sign-on for email and network access;
• Ability to add voting buttons to a messages;
• Ability to recall sent messages;
• Easy management of Outlook and Exchange Server profiles across multiple machines to lower support costs.

In-House vs. Hosted Exchange
The cost of implementing and administer Microsoft Exchange In-house is highly expensive. Here are some of the ROI considerations to have in mind for a proper implementation:

• HARDWARE / SOFTWARE: Front-end server, Exchange server hardware, Backup Domain Controller, Exchange 2007 Server license, Windows 2003 Server (incl. 5 licenses). Bandwidth, Antivirus / Antispam / Firewall Device. BACKUP of all related hardware and software.

• LICENSING: Exchange 2007 Server user licenses, Windows 2003 Server user licenses, Outlook 2007 user licenses, Antivirus. Other licenses: Blackberry Enterprise Server, Good Mobile Messaging, ActiveSync.

All hosted Exchange 2007 plans include the following features: Free multi-layer anti-virus protection Free premium anti-spam Free download of Outlook 2007 or Entourage (for Mac) for each user Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Control panel for administrators Control panel for end users Outlook Web Access 2007 (OWA) RPC over HTTP(S) MAPI, POP3, IMAP access Offline access to Outlook Company Global Address List (GAL) with unlimited contacts Unlimited Personal Outlook contacts Unlimited distribution lists 50 Inbound domains allowed 500 Recipients per message allowed Shared and personal calendaring Shared task lists Full features of Enterprise Microsoft Exchange 2007 One free top-level public folder Unlimited subfolders included free Top-level public folder limit of 100 Immediate activation

Optional Upgrades

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