MSExchange Editor

This topic was one of the key sessions in the last TechEd SEA 2007 at KL, Malaysia. Exchange Hosted Service is getting hotter in the market due to various challenges in Messaging & Collaboration infrastructure, some of them are below:

Exchange Server downtime is not acceptable these days due to productivity lost and revenue loss.
Spam is more dangerous and profit is behind this motivation.
Hard to manage the complex infrastructure and its integration due to time & cost limitation.

What is Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services?

People get confused easily by this name. I too had a wrong impression about Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) initially when it launched. Exchange Hosted Services comprises the following offerings:

Exchange Hosted Filtering: This is anti-spam/anti-virus filtering service.
Exchange Hosted Archive: Outsourced mail archiving service for message retention.
Exchange Hosted Continuity: allows users to access their last 30 days' email over the web and send/receive new mail to reduce impact of a mail server outage on users.
Exchange Hosted Encryption: offers policy-based message encryption.

Exchange Hosted Service is an SaaS model. in other words, Exchange Hosted services are deployed over the Internet. This will eventually reduce additional capital investment, eliminate the need of having IT pro resources and minimize messaging risks before they reach your corporate network/firewall.

Why do you go for Exchange Hosted Services?

Organizations choose Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services mainly because of three reasons:

Reliable & Ent

SPEAKERS:
Michael Osterman, President, Osterman Research
John Devenyns, Sr. Solutions Consultant, USA.NET

Register at: http://www.usa.net/webinar/osterman_partner.asp?pa…change

Many organizations are realizing significant gains in productivity and profitability with hosted email and mobile messaging services. A recent Osterman Research survey revealed that hosted email solutions can be less expensive than internally managed systems in many cases. Add to this the fact that mobile messaging use is growing rapidly, increasing the complexity for messaging managers, particularly for those in smaller organizations.

What are some of the main benefits of hosted messaging and hosted Exchange? What steps can be taken to evaluate hosted messaging and management for your organization? How does hosted messaging lower the total cost of ownership for messaging? How does hosted messaging simplify mobile messaging?

Join Osterman Research and USA.NET for this timely and informative webinar which will discuss the five steps to increasing productivity and profitability within your organization by leveraging today’s leading hosted messaging providers.

This 60-minute webinar will take place on October 3, 2007 at 1:00pm ET / 10:00amPT / 1800 UK Time and is hosted by Osterman Research and USA.NET.

You will learn answers to questions like:

What services should you expect from an end-to-end hosted messaging provider?
What are the most important attributes to look for in an email service provider?
How does a hosted solution reduce messaging complexity while increas

From Investment Advisor Magazine | September 2007 Issue

By Victor Silva, VP of client services of USA.NET

Although in the financial services sector most “official” communication still depends on the telephone authorization, the signed letter, the wire transfer, or the mailed prospectus, much information in the financial sector now is transferred by email—including recommendations, marketing materials, and client-relations materials.

This transfer of information exists in a world of precise oversight including self-regulation, regulation by state and federal overseers, internal and external auditing, industry standards, and legal obligations. Along with this complex environment comes a high level of legal exposure extending not only to employees but also to managers and officers who sometimes face personal liability from matters contained in those electronic communications.

All this electronic communication requires the same level of compliance as more traditional communications with regard to privacy, security, records retention, ongoing compliance, and recovery and discovery of information.

This transfer of information must be completely secure; it must produce a recoverable audit trail; it must be protected from outside tampering and from the barrage of spam interfering with email today; it must be disaster-proof, easily recoverable and secure from viruses, phishing, network attacks, and fraud.

Sometimes, brokerage offices and other financial services organizations believe the best way to secure their email and e-messaging information is to purchase their own server

Sale of hosted Microsoft Exchange Servers is now even more lucrative for 123Together.com affiliates. Prizes include 50” Plasma TVs, Home Theater Systems, iPod Nanos and more.

Burlington, MA, September 10, 2007 – 123Together.com, the leading provider of hosted enterprise-class messaging and collaboration solutions such as hosted Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3.0, has launched a contest for all current and new affiliates for its hosted email service. The goal of the contest is to generate additional revenue for its shared and dedicated hosted Microsoft Exchange Servers and is in addition to the standard affiliate payouts.

“The partnership between 123Together.com and our affiliates is very important to us. We appreciate their efforts and want to reward their hard work,” said Ravi Agarwal, chief executive officer of 123Together.com. “According to analysts, the market for hosted Microsoft Exchange will grow by over $600 million over the next year so our affiliates have the opportunity to obtain great prizes during this contest.”

Contest Levels and Prizes Awarded:

The affiliate contest for shared servers will run from September 10, 2007 – March 10, 2008.

Sales Levels and Prizes

Sell between $2,000.00-$4,999.99 and get a Home Theatre System
Sell between $5,000.00-$9,999.99 and get a 32” LCD HDTV
Sell between $10,000.00-$19,999.99 and get a 50” Plasma HDTV
Sell $20,000.00+ and get a 50” Plasma HDTV plus Home Theatre System

The affiliate contest for dedicated servers will run from September 10, 2007 – November 30, 2007.

Server Types and Pri

HTCmail is 100% hosted & managed email service based on Microsoft Hosted Exchange. PDA maker HTC introduced this service along with the announcement of HTC TyTN II launch early this month. TyTN II model is great for Mobile business users (See the picture below) and running on Windows Mobile 6. It has high speed HSDPA connectivity which is 9 times faster than 3G and in-built GPS. Will HTC compete with RIM? It doesn't seem to me a strong competitor for RIM in the enterprise market, but users in SME sector will prefer to use this over blackberry.

Great Combination!"HTC – smart mobility" – The tagline says it all. HTC is getting smarter and smarter when it comes to mobility. Now with HTCmail, it will start offering hosted exchange services – truly great combination. HTCmail is powered by Hosted Exchange 2007 technology. With Windows Mobile 6, mails are instantly delivered to the HTC device through MS outlook 2007 with real time access of up to 5 different email accounts. According to HTC, HTCmail service is compatible with all HTC devices. I haven't seen the pricing and its various subscription plans anywhere on the net and unfortunately, it's only available in some part of Europe.Key features of HTCmail hosted service
1. Business-critical information is always backed-up, up to date and protected.2. Users can sign up and manage their account online and 24-hour customer service centre.3. 2GB Mailbox size.4. 20MB mail send size limit.5. Email Protection Service: Anti-virus and anti-spam capabilities.6. Flexible subscriptions packages.7. Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile

Here is an interesting post which I think everyone will find useful:

"I came across a very interesting article/research this past month written by Michael Osterman from Network world. The article focuses on a very common question that most customers and decision makers ask when they are thinking of signing up for a Hosted Exchange account or establising an internal exchange solution: How secure is a hosted environment?

"This is a question I literally get every day and along the same lines I also get: “But how do I know that my information is really secure?” “What if it goes down will I lose everything?”"

Read more at source…

Milford, CT August 23, 2007 – On the heels of the announcement of a $50 million dollar financing by Goldman Sachs two weeks ago, Perimeter eSecurity, the leading provider of Complete Security On Demand, announced today a business combination with USA.NET, the leading provider of secure eMessaging services. The company also announced that as a follow-up to their initial investment Goldman Sachs provided equity financing along with Bessemer Ventures and the Stripes Group.

"For many years businesses needed huge IT departments to assess, integrate, and continually monitor security appliances, but network and email hygiene can no longer be a luxury exclusive to the largest corporations," said David Cowan, managing partner of Bessemer Venture Partners, who will take up a position on Perimeter’s Board. "So, Bessemer resolved to partner with the most business-friendly, state-of-the-art security and hosted business eMessaging companies that can deliver a soup-to-nuts service."

David Cowan has a strong track record in successful IT security funding. In addition to Postini – another security software-as-a-service (SaaS) company – that was recently purchased by Google for $625 million, he was also involved in the funding of Cyota, Counterpane, Lifelock and VeriSign, which he co-founded.

A leading SaaS company, USA.NET offers a fully integrated suite of secure hosted messaging services including its Hosted Microsoft® Exchange and Commercial Messaging Solution (CMS) platforms and suite of enhanced services including Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam, Content Filtering, Encrypted Email, Email Archi

What is the HMC 4.0 (Hosted Messaging & Collaboration) migration kit?

In this blog post I will briefly go through the HMC & its migration kit. Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.0 is a Microsoft solution kit which is comprised of a set of tools, proven best practices, scripts, and sample code snippets designed to effectively deploy Messaging and Collaboration services on multi-tenant servers in an Exchange Hosting Provider environment.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released the HMC 4.0 Migration toolkit. The below figure shows the folder information inside the HMC 4.0 migration kit file.

As you see above, this migration kit is comprised of a set of tools and white papers which assist hosters in migrating Microsoft Solutions for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.0 from previous Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5. The key phases in HMC 4.0 migration are:

To upgrade Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange 2007
To upgrade Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services version 2.0 to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0.
To provision data migration from Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 3.5 Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) to Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.0 MPS.

Key things to note!

If you have an old version of HMC, ensure you upgrade to HMC 3.5 before you start migrating to HMC 4.0.
If you have LCS (Live Communication Server) enabled users, do not migrate to HMC 4.0. Wait for next version of HMC (I guess HMC 4.5), as it includes OCS 2007.

Type of Migrations

In-place (Coexistence) – He

Unified Communication (voice, video, enhanced presence service, conferencing over internet connection and much more) is becoming the standard for business e-communication in larger organizations. SMBs (Small and Medium Sized Businesses) are little late, one reason could be due to the requirement of significant on-premise initial investments.

Simultaneously, SMBs perception of cost has become the major push factor to implement on-premise PBX systems, as they realize the facts of transformation from traditional phone to a hosted IP telephony system, as it can evolve into a full scale Unified Communication System. So it's the right time to study & plan for the Microsoft Exchange based Hosted unified communication services by leveraging Hosted PBX solutions.The industry leaders & all time competitors, Microsoft & Cisco are even turning their battle into a Love affair so that their products works together

With the introduction of Exchange 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (OCS 2007), many large organizations are gearing up for Unified Communications deployment in their organizations. Some of them are already doing a pilot test. There is a myth which says that SMBs may not be very keen on implementing Unified Communications due to its substantial budget requirements. I am hoping that sooner or later, most of the Exchange Hosting Providers will be able to offer Unified Communications solutions which are blended with Hosted Exchange 2007 & OCS 2007 to serve its SMB customers and to grow their businesses. All these hosters should equip themselves with a “

Handling spam & virus to mitigate business impact is the top most item in the IT budget of any organization these days. Creating a strong barrier between the customers’ messaging infrastructure and the outside world is one of the key strategies of IT Management.

What are some of the problems we currently face in this area?

Lost employee productivity – Because they spend time deleting spam after careful checking, they discuss it with their co-workers and lastly, they complain and report to the IT support, management, supervisors etc.

IT Costs ramping up – Exchange Server processors get intensive while handling spam and consume storage and bandwidth. Procure additional hardware to cope with the exorbitant amount of spam. Lastly, IT administrators get busier while fighting spam.

Apparently, IT management keeps thinking about ways to upgrade the messaging infrastructure capacity. If you are using Exchange Hosting with one of the Microsoft Certified Partners, then you need to know how they protect your e-mail & manage e-mail traffic. In general, most of the providers have a mechanism in their hosted messaging environment to provide advanced security and management functionality which addresses external e-mail connectivity concerns such as viruses, spam and denial-of-service attacks. So hosters “sanitize” the e-mail by filtering it earlier than its arrival at the customer’s mailbox. Overall, this layer of protection minimizes unwanted and destructive emails coming to the customer’s organization.

Along with Messaging services, customers leverage the additional e-mail