I was recently given the honour of upgrading the email server in our company, or at least finding someone that could do it for us!! I get all the great jobs around the office but this was something I had no knowledge of whatsoever and I am guessing I am not alone, so I thought I would write a hub about my experiences and hopefully it will be of some help.

We were running a very old server with a very old copy of Microsoft Exchange (2000 believe) and the hardware is as old as the operating system itself, so an upgrade was required as an urgency as we were experiencing major email problems due to the hardware dying. My instructions were simple, get the best email server you can on the cheap, happy days.

we have 30 users in the company and they all have MASSIVE email boxes because email is the lifeline of our business, the hardware would need to last us for some time plus the software needed replacing. I started with our IT Support company to see what they could offer me, and they hit me hard.....

We were quoted 6k for the hardware, software and installation!! now I know my boss well l and you have two hopes of them spending this kind of money on IT, it simply wasn't going to happen, in fact I had less than half of this to play with.

After about 8 phone calls to other companies I was all quoted out. It seemed that whatever way I approached it, the project was going to be expensive with the cheapest quote weighing in at 3K.

I was at the point of giving up until one of the companies I approached mentioned what he felt was the perfect solution for our budget, Hosting our email externally.

I wasn't sure that the boss would be too happy about this, as our company relies on its email to such a degree that the idea of hosting it externally isn't worth consideration, but I sat and listened to what the guy had to say and within 1 hour i was convinced this was the way forward.

For those not in the know, Hosted exchange is exactly that, an exchange server Hosted externally in a data centre that you access from your office. You still use Outlook of whatever email app you like, you just access it over the internet opposed to locally, this means;

• You can throw your old server away.
• You don't need to buy any new hardware or software.
• You can access your email from anywhere via webmail.

Which in return, means;

• You save a shed load of money
• You pay nothing upfront.
• You get a fat Christmas bonus from the boss.

My main concern was talking my boss round the idea, I know what he s like about security and this was the biggest stumbling block. we went the whole hog and viewed the location where the servers were kept and we had a full demonstration of the services. Everything is encrypted so there is no way anyone is going to get access to our data and everything gets backed up daily, which wasn't happening before.

Conclusions,

I can't recommend this enough, everyone doesn't notice any difference apart from the improvements in speed and less emails getting lost. It's made me look good and everyone in the company is benefitting. If you are thinking about upgrading your email then I cannot recommend this enough.

Resources;

Hosted Exchange company we used. Bags of info on their website if you want to learn a bit more about it.