Let Someone Else Host...
I fondly remember a few years ago when Application Service Providers (ASP) were all the rage and when on a regular bases I and other media were touting various hosted application solutions.
These ASP's and their solutions are now quite common place, so not even mentioned as a phenomenon any more.
ASPs such as Netledger, Salesforce.com and many other lesser known companies are still around - providing a range of "out sourced" services to their customers.
This brings me to my topic of today - email hosting.
Most businesses have some form of email. Be it, a shared AOL account (aghhhhh), some email boxes provided by their internet service provider, or your own full scale email server.
The problem with email is managing it. The more users you have, the more features you want and the more complex your set up, the harder things can be.
Microsoft's Exchanger server, a very popular email system is used by many businesses. Of course IBM's Lotus Notes, and Novel's Group Wise are also widely used, not to mention many lesser used solutions.
Microsoft Exchange offers a wide range of collaboration features, including shared calendaring and integration with the Microsoft Office suite of products. It can be difficult to set up even a simple email server, but managing a Microsoft Exchange solution can be a real pain for those not experienced with a MS Exchange server. Installation is only 1/2 of the battle, the other part is managing the server once installed.
This is where a hosted service solution might come into play. Companies, such as Intermedia.Net, Rackspace and Interland provide managed Exchange servers, accessed via the Internet for your business.
You can have the same advanced MS Exchange functionality as larger businesses with dedicated email administrators, but let an email hosting company such as Intermedia.Net do all the work.
For one monthly fee per user, you can quickly provide powerful email features to each of your employees.
I know people who have a Hotmail, Yahoo or some other email address to use when they are "away from the office", as their company has not provide them with a way to access their email remotely.
According to Intermedia.Net, MS Exchange onsite can be very expensive for a small business and requires ongoing maintenance. When the server is down, the business needs to either have someone on staff with the talent to bring it up or rely on an outside network administration resources to respond quickly to the challenge.
With a hosted solution, the maintenance headaches become those of the ISP as does the hardware/software investment.
Companies can rely on POP3 mailboxes instead of MS Exchange, however, they lose the rich collaborative tools available in Exchange.
If you do not want the hassle of managing an email server but wantt the professional features of a full fledged email hosting service, considering the services of a hosted email solution might be wise.
There comes a point of course where you have to decide if its economically viable to use a hosting service or manage your own technology infrastructure.
Whichever decision you make, ensure you always consult with a reliable, objective and experienced technology consultant who knows your business.
If you consider using an email (or other) hosting service provider here's a few things to consider:
Let's take the case of CEG Worldwide an Intermedia.net customer. CEG provides financial advisors with insights, strategies and tools to significantly grow their businesses while better serving their clients. By combining its leading empirical research expertise with proven business experience, CEG Worldwide is offers advisors, CPAs, insurance representatives and others in the financial services industry pragmatic and effective guidance.
Founded in 2000, CEG Worldwide is a 'virtual company' whose principals work from home offices in multiple locations across four states. "We needed collaborative tools that would help us work closely, but due to our decentralized nature we didn't want to host any physical equipment," said CEG's managing principal, Lewis Schiff. "We certainly didn't want to hire an IT staff, because of how that would impact the bottom line. What we required was ASP managed hosting solution that would allow us to function with agility by managing emails and sharing calendars and files."
CEG considered several -Web mail based solution such as POP mail, but elected to go with what Lewis called "the more robust Microsoft Exchange solution that several of our partners were already familiar with." The company signed on with Intermedia.NET, which deploys powerful groupware servers in the Microsoft Exchange environment and allows customers to easily manage hosting services via its proprietary HostPilot® Control Panel.
With Intermedia.NET, CEG was able to focus on its core business while all its hosting needs were being met without any dedicated in-house resources. "We are able to do all our own scheduling by sharing calendars, we can access our email remotely through Outlook Web Access and - in some cases - via the Blackberry wireless email solution, which works beautifully in an Exchange environment. We also store a great deal of information on the Intermedia server at a very reasonable, competitive cost," said Lewis.
"We count on Intermedia.NET for reliable performance and security," Lewis added. "Outages are rare and quickly resolved, and we have never had a problem with viruses being spread through email channels."
Recently, CEG Worldwide launched an Australian division, and all of the company's Australian partners are getting online with Intermedia.NET. "It's a pretty robust system where we can use the same email account," explains Lewis. "Our Australian partners' mail comes to their name @ cegaustralia; for American partners, it comes to cegworldwide.com. But it is the same account and we can manage schedules and share information across the continents."
As CEG worldwide expands, its principals plan to continue to work with Intermedia.NET. "Intermedia is continually refining its offerings and adds new ones, such as the recent ability to support BlackBerry," said Lewis. "Everything they provide is really powerful and if they added new services we would definitely investigate them."
