Exchange Online vs Hosted Exchange

[zacdesai]

Hi Guys -

Making a decision on a small company - currently about 20 mailboxes, using plain pop email.

I have recently used traditional Hosted Exchange at another client - which works a treat with Outlook. Main reason considering this new Exchange Online from Microsoft is A) Cost - $4 per user, includes 25GB mailbox. Whereas traditional hosted Exchange services typically offer 2-4GB mailboxes at +- R70 per user. B) The larger mailboxes on Exchange online.

My chief reservation is obviously the privacy issues, with all data residing at MS Data centres in Ireland. :erm:

Anyone try out Exchange online as yet? Besides the privacy issues - how's the general performance accessing email via international bandwidth?

Thanks!
Zakaria

 

[web_dude]

a friend used exchange online hosted in USA and it was a nightmare. Sync issues all the time.

I would rather use Google Apps. And regarding privacy... hey... who cares about the little secrets of a 20-user company (unless your 20-user company has offices in Nkandla).

 

[Telasera]

Hi Zacdesai,

Hosted Exchange with a local presence in South Africa would be ideal as your users will have the best experience due to the lower latency and faster speeds available on local servers.

Another advantage of using a local product is the support provided most of the time its easier and faster to resolve issues with local ISP's rather than trying to open support tickets with Microsoft.

Be aware that there are some local hosted exchange products out there that being resold from the USA so its best to do your research before making your decision.

 

[zacdesai]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Much appreciated.

 

[w1z4rd]

Hi Guys -

Making a decision on a small company - currently about 20 mailboxes, using plain pop email.

I have recently used traditional Hosted Exchange at another client - which works a treat with Outlook. Main reason considering this new Exchange Online from Microsoft is A) Cost - $4 per user, includes 25GB mailbox. Whereas traditional hosted Exchange services typically offer 2-4GB mailboxes at +- R70 per user. B) The larger mailboxes on Exchange online.

My chief reservation is obviously the privacy issues, with all data residing at MS Data centres in Ireland. :erm:

Anyone try out Exchange online as yet? Besides the privacy issues - how's the general performance accessing email via international bandwidth?

Thanks!
Zakaria

Rather go Google Business Apps. Best value for money. Amazing reliability and features. Way more reliable than any South African product I have seen. Unless you are doing VoIP or gaming services low latencies are not important.

 

[Frikkenator]

Hi Guys -

Making a decision on a small company - currently about 20 mailboxes, using plain pop email.

I have recently used traditional Hosted Exchange at another client - which works a treat with Outlook. Main reason considering this new Exchange Online from Microsoft is A) Cost - $4 per user, includes 25GB mailbox. Whereas traditional hosted Exchange services typically offer 2-4GB mailboxes at +- R70 per user. B) The larger mailboxes on Exchange online.

My chief reservation is obviously the privacy issues, with all data residing at MS Data centres in Ireland. :erm:

Anyone try out Exchange online as yet? Besides the privacy issues - how's the general performance accessing email via international bandwidth?

Thanks!
Zakaria

I know it's a bit late but just thought I'd share our experience with Office 365. Been using it now for 8 months, never had a single issue or downtime. Their support is also very good if you need any help setting it up.

You can go with a locally hosted one, but I honestly don't see how latency will affect user experience with email in the slightest. If you mail arrives 400ms later will it really matter?

Also from a privacy concern you can have a look through the privacy policy, pretty much everything is encrypted and is geo-redundant (stored to 3 location accross the world). I'd also put money on it that MS's security will be much better than any locally hosted environment as they've got far too much at stake if there was a breach.

 

[guest2013-1]

I found people who run Exchange hosted locally (as in their local network) loves sending huge files to each other etc. Just remember that each of them would be sending the email and receiving the email over the internet connection now. So that "instant email of a MP3 file I'm sharing with the office" won't happen, it will chomp away at the upload speed, and then the download speed, that might degrade browsing performance etc.

I agree that WHERE it's hosted isn't an issue anymore because of uncapped. Maybe 5 years back you might have had an issue because if you hit your international cap etc. But now it doesn't make much difference at all, and latency is really useless measure when it comes to email being hosted. It's literally just files being downloaded, and regardless of where, it should come down just as fast as if it was hosted locally.

It's really up to you though, I feel the cost and maintenance of hosting an exchange on the company network (even with SBS) is a PITA. This moves away the responsibility of backups/corruptions/tweaks/blablabla but you do suffer on the "instant delivery if company person A sends to B"

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Case study : Company used traditional Exchange (Exchange 2003 on Server 2003) in-house.

Server crashed recently (due to generator not kicking in and UPS failing).

We purchased a new box, installed Server 2008 and Exchange 2010, and put this box in at Hetzner's DC. This caters for 60+ users.

Advantages :

1. Every single device (ipad, laptop, desktop, phone etc) have access to this Exchange.
2. Bandwidth constraints is not an issue with Hetzner.
3. If office ADSL goes down, emails can still be accessed via 3G and ADSL via other sites. (A big plus, since we had incidents in the past when the ADSL line would go down, people onsite and out of the office can't send/receive).
4. You can keep backups of your Exchange database, so the chances of emails lost is very small.

Disadvantages :

1. Server is not under your direct control anymore. (If it is really, really mission-critical, then rather keep it in-house)
2. All email have to travel outwards/inwards on your internet line (adsl/diginet/etc). So what? Just get a fatter/faster line.

I would say, that in this case, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

And the last bit is :
If you use gmail (or any other cloud email) then you don't need to worry about using your own server etc, neither do you need any IT email guru to manage/maintain your email server.
The disadvantage of this is that if there is a buggerup in the cloud, and your emails is lost, then it's tough. You're directly responsible for your own email backups.
If your main ADSL line goes down, then the whole company can't send/receive any emails as there's no path to the email server...

 

[web_dude]

On that exchange environment...

does your server still require CALS for your users to access their emails???

What about the cost of Hosting with Hetzner? (Including the Internet traffic?)

 

[guest2013-1]

Just have to add. The_Librarian is sort of mistaken (probably just his wording)

If the Exchange is hosted at Hetzner or the moon. If the company's ADSL line goes down, they don't have access to email ANYWAY.

If it's hosted on their local network, they can still send each other funny pictures like they want. But at least for that brief moments when the internet is down, some work can get done.

 

[w1z4rd]

Just have to add. The_Librarian is sort of mistaken (probably just his wording)

If the Exchange is hosted at Hetzner or the moon. If the company's ADSL line goes down, they don't have access to email ANYWAY.

If it's hosted on their local network, they can still send each other funny pictures like they want. But at least for that brief moments when the internet is down, some work can get done.

By sending each other funny pictures? Servers onsite are more likely to go down then hosted servers. Also, everyone and the dog has a 3g connection these days. If the ADSL goes down you can still access your mail from anywhere.

Google Apps > Hosted Exchange > Local Exchange

 

[w1z4rd]

If you use gmail (or any other cloud email) then you don't need to worry about using your own server etc, neither do you need any IT email guru to manage/maintain your email server.
The disadvantage of this is that if there is a buggerup in the cloud, and your emails is lost, then it's tough. You're directly responsible for your own email backups.
If your main ADSL line goes down, then the whole company can't send/receive any emails as there's no path to the email server...

Thats not really a disadvantage if you backup as per normal. So what you are saying is that cloud can go down like legacy servers (very rare but possible). If you dont have backups you are screwed. If you were fair on the cloud you would have included backups.. just like your onsite or other hosted solutions needs them as well.

Advantage of a cloud is that its more stable. Does not have a single point of failure and something like Google Apps has way more security and stability than any legacy system.