What is Hosted Exchange?

This is part of our “What Is?” series.  ‘Cloud Computing’ as a business practice is relatively new and it’s easy to get confused by the new terminology.  In this series we explain clearly products and services in the ‘Cloud’ space and what they do for your business.  For more articles, click here.

Unless your business is strongly focused on design or creativity, chances are you use Microsoft Outlook to send and receive emails, track your appointments in Calendar and maybe even keep on top of your to-dos with the ‘Tasks’ feature. 

All that information in Microsoft Outlook – your emails, your calendar appointments and your list of tasks – needs to be stored somewhere.  Depending on how diligent you are at cleaning out your email inbox, the space needed to store all this information can be pretty huge!

This isn’t usually a problem for the at-home computer.  All the information is kept in the one place – your hard drive.  But when you enter an office situation, it gets trickier.  Maybe you need to use a different computer today but still need full access to your information.  Or perhaps a staff member needs to work from home; how can they see the emails they sent yesterday from the office without actually being there?

This is where Microsoft Exchange and a ‘server’ come in.  Instead of storing the information from Outlook on the individual hard drives, the information from all your employees is now stored in one place – the server – and pushed out to whichever computer they are accessing it from through the software program Microsoft Exchange.  If you already have a server, you’ll know how temperamental they can be… sort of like a fussy child, needing a particular temperature so they don’t overheat, regular back ups in case they freak out and sometimes they’re just unhappy for no apparent reason.

‘Hosted Exchange’ takes away the hassle of owning a Server by putting all that information on our servers, instead.   Isn’t that nice?  We deal with the temperamental child, while you get on with the job of, well, your job.   All employees have exactly the same access to their information and features that they had before, with some added benefits:

• SPAM and Virus Protection

It’s not just your information we look after – it’s a lot of businesses.  So we invest a lot of money, more than any individual business could, in the best SPAM and Virus protection software available.  Your inbox and computers will be squeaky clean and healthy!

• Guaranteed Backup and Data Recovery

Servers ‘crashing’ (when they stop working for no apparent reason) is stressful because there’s no guarantee you will get your important data back.  When your data is hosted on cloud servers though, we guarantee that there will always be a back up copy available and you can be up and running again in no time.

• Top Grade Security

In the event of a robbery or corporate espionage, it’s possible for all your confidential business information to fall in the wrong hands, simply by your server being hacked.   Cloud systems use strong security measures to make sure your information is always safe.

• 24/7 Technical Support

When your server is located at a physical site, a repair technician needs to physically travel out to your offices to fix it.  This can take hours and sometimes days.  When your data is stored with us, it takes just minutes to offer assistance and it can be done over the telephone.

Let’s take a look at what this means practically for your day-to-day business operations with a day in the life of our Small Business Owner, Brian.

Brian’s Day Without Hosted Exchange

Brian gets in to the office early on Tuesday for a head start on his inbox before the briefing meeting at 9am.  Microsoft Outlook is sluggish to load, probably because an employee dumped a whole bunch of video footage on the server last weekend.  ActiveSync for his mobile phone is also taking a while.  The next moment, the server whirring away behind his desk stops whirring.  It’s crashed.  A technician from the tech support company arrives at 4pm that afternoon during which time his employees couldn’t access their emails and the new apprentice couldn’t even get set up and started on work.  The technician asks for the latest back up of data, which was only done Friday afternoon unfortunately, so any work done on Monday is gone forever.  The invoice was in the hundreds.  Brian zones out in front of a wrestling match on TV that night.

Brian’s Day With Hosted Exchange

Brian gets in to the office early on Tuesday for a head start on his inbox before the briefing meeting at 9am.  He opens up Microsoft Outlook and notices an email from his Cloud company informing him that one of his employees dumped a whole bunch of video footage on the server last weekend, pushing up the limits.  He replies and tells him it’ll be deleted, cc’ing in the employee.  He doesn’t quite make it through all his emails before the meeting but that’s okay.  He deals with the last ones on his mobile during a boring discussion.  When his new apprentice arrives at midday, he rings technical support to get her set up and she’s on her way in ten minutes.   The cost is included in the monthly plan.  Brian spends the night having a beer with a friend.

Hosted Exchange can streamline your business and remove the hassles of dealing with a server.  Migrating your information to a hosted server doesn’t take long and, with Complete Cloud, is done by a dedicated set up expert who will customize it to your needs.  You will never need to worry about servers crashing or file size again.

Who Is Brian?

Brian is our fictional character who owns a business wholesaling electrical tools.  He has five employees in sales, administration and logistics in a small office in an industrial park.  He likes cats.  Fluffy ones.