Exchange Hosting Blog

The Exchange Hosting blog focuses on news, services, partners, and other thoughts about what is happening in the Exchange Hosting industry. The blog will discuss how to better outsource an Exchange messaging infrastructure to a Hosted environment and the latest information about the Hosted Exchange industry will be covered in detail through press releases from leading Exchange Hosting vendors.

AppRiver Teams With Florida Chamber to Protect Businesses from Hurricanes and Other Natural Disasters

GULF BREEZE, FL, June 2, 2008 – AppRiver, a leader in managed email security and messaging collaboration services, today announced that it has partnered with Florida Chamber of Commerce to help businesses in the state avoid the loss of critical email messages because of hurricanes or other natural disasters. This is the fourth consecutive year that AppRiver and the Chamber have teamed up to offer this service in conjunction with the arrival of hurricane season.

Since it first became available in 2005, the "Digital Disaster Preparedness" program has become an essential item on many companies’ disaster preparation checklist. “The Digital Disaster program allows businesses in harm’s way to quickly reroute their inbound messages to AppRiver servers where they will be securely held. Once the danger passes, or communications are restored, all held messages can be released and delivered to the corporate mail servers,” said Blake Gehres, Chief Technology Officer for the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Registrations is very simple, it lakes less than 10 minutes, and once completed will enable AppRiver to monitor a company's email server activity. If the receiving server is affected by a hurricane, AppRiver will begin queuing the business' incoming email messages in one of its own securely located data centers until that company's email servers are up and running again. Additionally, the company can also request for its email to be redirected elsewhere or made available online, so the business can remain functional during the storm and the post-storm recovery period.

According to

Good News to Students & Alumni: Exchange Labs is free from Microsoft Live@edu

Live@edu now offers institutions the option of giving their students and alumni an Exchange Labs inbox and students get Messaging & Collaboration experience which is what they will probably use after their graduation. This also gives the University/School IT administrators a better control over messaging security and simplified deployment. Students & Alumni are accessing this reliable and security enhanced email experience from Microsoft for absolute zero cost. This service is actually provided through Exchange Hosting service, directly from Microsoft Live@edu .

Great Application Students really needed

This is the application Students and Alumni really want in their day to day life as they can now use a co-branded email inbox as their primary account. Also, they can use Office Live Workspace to save, access, and share documents and files online, and encourage themselves to do collaboration. Some of the on-campus collaboration includes shared calendars with free/busy lookup between students, student directories with administrative control to provision distribution lists, and the ability to add faculty and staff that are using Exchange on-premise to student directories.

Close Integration with Students environment

Live@edu & Exchange Labs works seamlessly with the information systems your students already use and closely integrates with your infrastructure. Universities can provide students with hosted e-mail with quota up to 10 GB inboxes and 20 MB attachments size limit. Students can also access their e-mail, contacts and calendar from Outlook Web Access and

Exchange Hoster’s Pain points with bandwidth

I came across the news recently where Exchange hosting providers give lots of attention to WAN Optimization these days and I thought of giving my perspective here in this blog post.

Exchange Hoster's Pain points with bandwidth

The Exchange Hosting industry is becoming popular day by day, with growing numbers of providers everywhere providing Messaging & collaboration services to customers around the world, these customers are mostly SMEs. Microsoft Exchange being the core component of this service, it has been evolving from old versions to provide better functionalities, features and user experiences. Now with Exchange 2007 server, users can do even better. However, what about the performance? Customers by and large work from different locations, such as on the road, in a meeting with their customers, while commuting, etc. And these users often complain about slowness in accessing email client (e.g. Outlook). In an Exchange hosting scenario, all your customers have Internet connections and high bandwidth ADSL or slow connections depend on the customer's location and internet infrastructure readiness. So, even if the hosting providers increase the bandwidth and no of servers in its datacenter, the customers are still stuck with these basic performance issues – Latency, a nightmare word for every customer as well as hosting providers.

This application latency gets magnified over a period of time, and hosters start scratching their head to put off the fire from customers at different angles in the world. Well, things are changing as there are solutions in the market tod

AppRiver Named Red Herring North America 100 Winner

GULF BREEZE, FL – AppRiver LLC (www.appriver.com), a leading provider of email messaging solutions, has been selected as one of the Red Herring 100, the most innovative private technology companies based in North America. The Red Herring editorial board selected AppRiver as one of 100 winners from a pool of more than 1,500 applicants. Nominees were closely evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their ecosystem.

"We can see the exciting evolution of the technology sector reflected in the quality and variety of exceptional companies that we had to choose from in putting our list together," said Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring. "It was tough to choose just 100 winners from such a large list of excellent contenders, and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists."

The 100 winning companies were announced today at the Red Herring North America event in San Jose, California, where the CEOs of the winning startups have been presenting their innovative ideas and technologies to an audience of leading entrepreneurs, financiers, and corporate strategists all week.

"We are pleased to be among the high-tech industry leaders and innovators represented by the Red Herring 100," said Michael Murdoch, CEO and co-founder of AppRiver. “We got here by anticipating our customers’ needs and providing them with cost-effective on-demand solutions. That will remain our primary focus in the years ahead.”

Abou

Web Based Services from Microsoft – Exchange Online & SharePoint Online: How better is this compared to third party solution?

As expected, Microsoft is now entered into the hosted services market. Initially they had launched Exchange Hosted Services whereby enterprises can leverage Microsoft's proven Anti-Spam and Anti Virus services. Recently, Microsoft announced its beta release of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs), Fig 01.

Fig 01

Why such a solution from Microsoft?

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Unified Communications are difficult for small business to setup and manage the day to day operation. Also, when it comes to technology refresh/upgrade, it consumes substantial $$$$ from organization's budget.

Industry recognizes this challenge and also, realized that this should be utilized as hosted services at its best. At the same time, maintain the quality messaging and collaboration applications.

Sounds like another hurting by Microsoft?

This is not new to Microsoft as these types of offerings have been in the market from third party vendors for sometime. But Can Microsoft outsell the competitor presently in the market? May be in the future. They do not come up with services for third party applications for example, Blackberry enterprise server (BES). This piece of application is critical for Enterprises to increase employees productivity. Blackberry continue to lead in no#1 position in Mobile Messaging Market. This is why the current offering from Microsoft may not fly for most businesses unless they extend third party integration like blackberry, which will be very unlikely.

How is this Microsoft business m

groupSPARK Senior Executive Officer To Speak At ISPCon Spring 2008

BURLINGTON, MA – May 13, 2008 – groupSPARK, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the leading provider of private label hosted software services including hosted Exchange Server 2007, hosted SharePoint Services v3.0, and hosted Dynamics CRM, announced today that groupSPARK senior executive officer, Ravi Agarwal, will be speaking at the ISPCon Spring 2008 conference and trade show.

ISPCon Spring 2008 will be held at the Donald E. Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois from May 13-15, 2008. The event brings together 2500+ internet industry professionals including ISPs, webhosting providers, VoIP providers and numerous other internet industry professionals to discuss all facets of internet business including ways to increase revenue and develop new business opportunities.

Ravi Agarwal, groupSPARK senior executive officer, will speak to attendees on Thursday, May 15, 2008 on ways for ISPs and the service provider community to successfully compete in the expanding hosted services arena. His presentation titled SaaS vs. Software + Service: How You Can Survive Microsoft’s Entry into the Hosted Services Market, will speak to the trepidation now felt by resellers of hosted services worldwide regarding Microsoft’s decision to enter the market with their own hosted services offerings. Mr. Agarwal will address the explosive growth in the market and offer strategies resellers can employ to stand apart from the competition and provide value added products and services to their small and mid-size business customers.

“The hosting industry is growing dramatically

Xobni will turbo charge your outlook.

Last week I got an invite from Xobni to try its beta version of Email productivity tool which turbo charge outlook as well as socialize the way we use outlook. Great tool Exchange Hosting providers can recommend this to its users; this is certainly a big leap for outlook in terms of end user experience.

As per Xobni, this tool help users to find information buried in MS outlook through sidebar View which has Past Conversations & Attachments. Also, email Search done at lightning speed to locate attachments, contacts, conversations etc…

Microsoft Outlook is much better than any other email client when mail management matters and but Xobni went beyond what MS outlook offered currently in terms of email management rather socialized approach by a free add-on application on the sidebar.Look at the below sidebar in my outlook.

What does Xobni do to turbo charge MS outlook? Here are my favorite features:

Email search
E-mail analytics
Phone number extraction
Threaded conversations
File exchange recently
Xobni sidebar

Great productivity tool for any outlook users, I hope they introduce this to more beta users and release it to public in real quick. In the meantime, I am hoping that in its next version (I guess they are currently looking into it) is that Xobni show all telephone numbers from my contacts. I am wondering what criteria they are using to extract the phone number, because for anyone there are more numbers in their personal contacts.

In summary, Xobni is a fantastic productivity tool. I have installed this into both Outlook 2003 & Outlook 2007 at o

Lookout for Hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Hostingcon 2008?

Its Hostingcon time again. HostingCon is world's largest event for hosted services professionals. HostingCon 2008 will be help at Navy Pier in Chicago.

Exchange hosting Service providers will eagerly look for this event,  as it helps them connect with many people in the industry, meeting with new people and exchanging business ideas and showcasing what they offer to customers. I was talking to Mr. Alon Cohen, Marketing manager in GroupSpark about this event and what their customers to look for in the event. He says,

“HostingCon is the most important Software as a Service (SaaS) related hosting event for us to participate in each year.  We always look forward to taking part in the sessions and meeting with other industry-leading hosting providers to help shape the future of the hosting industry.  We also exhibit at HostingCon which enables us to talk to attendees about our Private Label Exchange service and how they can grow their SaaS offerings under their own brand and dramatically increase their monthly average revenue per user.  This allows us to expand our groupSPARK reseller channel and enables resellers to offer enterprise-class hosted services such as hosted Microsoft Exchange Server, Windows SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM to their customers.  We expect that interest in HostingCon and knowledge of hosted software services will dramatically increase this year with the additional press generated recently about the availability of new SaaS solutions.”

So look for Exchange hosting companies and most importantly understand what they have to offer in Hosted Mic

Hosted Exchange 2007 to Be Offered to SMBs by 123Together.com at Interop Las Vegas 2008

Burlington, MA, April 29, 2008 – 123Together.com, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a leading provider of hosted enterprise-class messaging and collaboration solutions such as hosted Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and hosted Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, today announced that it is exhibiting at Interop Las Vegas 2008.

Information technology is more critical to business success than ever before and Interop Las Vegas 2008 is the industry’s most comprehensive IT event of the year. Serving as the hub for business and technology leaders interested in the latest in business technology, this year’s event brings together 20,000 attendees, including corporate and IT professionals, journalists and industry analysts from around the world. Attendees will explore a full range of innovative business solutions such as green IT, mobility, Software as a Service, and the latest messaging and collaboration applications.

Attendees can visit 123Together.com at booth 1082 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 29-May 1, 2008. Small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) will learn about the advantages of 123Together.com’s hosted messaging and collaboration services such as hosted Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 and hosted SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 enabling them to immediately take advantage enterprise-class email and data collaboration solutions without incurring any upfront expense, deployment delays, requirements for new hardware and software or lengthy contract commitments. They can utilize all of the features and functionality of the

Software as Service (SasS) or Software+Service (S+S)?

Introduction about Next Generation Hosting

Through Software as a Service model, Exchange Hosting providers has been delivering the messaging services at its best. But the customer needs are growing such that now broader services are to be provided, which goes beyond accessing mere application (e.g. Outlook over Web) through browsers.

Industry is now watching the progress at Software + Services (S+S) model whereby providers extend the existing model to fulfill customer’s next level demand on total business solutions as well as enhance the end user experience. This certainly needs a high level integration of enterprise, desktop and web based applications, taking the Exchange Hosting Provider to next level, "Software + Services" (S+S).

In other words, S+S providers create a long-term relationship with customers as they provide total business solutions rather just Exchange & Outlook. For example, S+S providers in Exchange hosting sector are capable of providing integrated user experience of hosted Microsoft exchange, hosted SharePoint, hosted Unified Communications using Microsoft Office communications Server product. Microsoft is aggressively aligning its future products to assist the service providers in S+S space so that customers will be enabled with the services and end user experience that S+S providers can deliver.

What will be the Next Generation Hosting Platform & How Microsoft products
are aligned?

Opportunities with S+S are going to grow exponentially according to the current customer business trends – S+S will be a sure preference for customers over Sa

Scroll to Top