Microsoft Hosted Exchange from CWCS - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

Will you increase the price of Microsoft Hosted Exchange after I’ve Signed Up

No. Historically, the cost per user for hosted email and solutions has remained steady or even reduced while the number of features, benefits and capabilities increases and improves.

For example, in October 2012 CWCS increased Hosted Exchange mailbox sizes from 1 GB to 25 GB! Once you’ve started using the CWCS service, we think it will soon become an essential tool for your business and part of your operating cost – it will be a predictable monthly cost.

I've heard that speed, response and download times for e-mail and attachments in a hosted environment can be a little slow?

With a modern broadband connection, most customers have ample connectivity speed and they  never notice a difference between an ‘on-premise’ email solution and one that is hosted. There is more than enough speed in a DSL, Cable or dedicated Internet line. More importantly, if you have any mobile employees, they can access the messaging solution through any broadband connection, no matter where they are, and don’t need to deal with  things like firewalls which can also slow access.

Surely I have more control with an in-house solution?

With hosted Microsoft Exchange from CWCS, you still have the control to manage and customize your messaging solution. While CWCS takes responsibility for most of the day-to-day administrative functions like operating system administration, patching, performance tuning and optimization, security hardening, anti-virus, anti-SPAM, data backup and archiving, our customers use simple online administrative tools to control user accounts, manage quotas, create mailing lists and manage folders. As a result, you stay in control of the critical business components of Outlook while we focus on keeping it up, running, and working efficiently and effectively fopr your business.

I’m concerned about data privacy and security ‘in the cloud’. How safe is my business information on Hosted Microsoft Exchange?

At CWCS we take data privacy and security extremely seriously, and there are a number of different ways we approach it. For example:-

• Anti-Virus and Anti-SPAM Solutions – At the very least, spam is annoying, can waste staff time, or be offensive. But it can also be more serious: viruses, worms and the spam emails can all have significant and catastrophic impacts on a businesses entire IT system. CWCS Managed Hosting uses a variety of anti-virus and anti-spam techniques, including the Microsoft Exchange anti-SPAM capabilities and anti-virus. This scans each message for viruses both inbound and outbound, as well as the servers and stored documents.

• Backup and Disaster Recovery –all CWCS Managed Hosting customer data is backed up incrementally, every day and completely every week. These backups are kept temporarily within the backup system and maintained and archived off-site.

• Data Privacy – Every customer's data source is protected from outside access through a robust security, intrusion detection, firewall and other methods.

What about compliance with UK, European  and International Legal and Regulatory Requirements on Data Retention?

Data storage and regulatory compliance is often complex. However, we strongly believe that CWCS  provides a number of features that will feed into your compliance obligations for data retention and archiving.

My current email solution is even cheaper than yours. There are also some available for  free. Why should I pay more just for e-mail?

Today, e-mail is a fundamental component of successful businesses. Loss of communications and messaging can result in lost revenue, lost customers, and inability to perform work  and unproductive employees. You get what you pay for. With CWCS Managed Hosting, you get a high quality, secure and reliable ‘business class’ solution.

What’s more, it delivers far more than just e-mail, for example:

• Contact lists that all employees can view, share and edit, regardless of location
• The ability for employees to schedule meetings, events and resources by viewing every other employee's current schedules and commitments
• Shared folders and document repositories that all employees can access regardless of location
• Access via smartphones
• Advanced anti-SPAM and anti-Virus protection to eliminate the annoyance of unwanted e-mails and the risk of downtime
• Comprehensive archiving and backup

We strongly believe our Microsoft Hosted Exchange solution is competitively priced, and that the value in terms of employee productivity, efficiency and effectiveness far outweighs the monthly cost.

What happens if something goes wrong with Hosted Exchange?

One of the benefits of CWCS solution is that we understand you need access to your e-mail 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We have a team of IT technical specialists working in our Nottingham data centres around the clock. They proactively monitor the system for issues and problems. These resources monitor for and respond to outages as well as performance degradations, all focused on ensuring your e-mail solution is operating at the highest level of performance. If you are experiencing a problem, you can immediately call our support desk and they will open an incident ticket. If they can't help you directly, they’ll escalate the ticket to a senior engineer.

This sounds technical. How easy is it to use, really?

You’re right – setting up Microsoft Exchange isn’t always easy. That’s one of the reasons it’s a good idea to get CWCS to do it! Our technical specialists do the complex setting up, and we’ve focused on making everything as simple and easy to use as possible for everyone in your business, including end users and administrators.

For Users - If you don't already use Microsoft Outlook, every end user will receive a copy of this software for use on their desktop. This product is simple to install and provides clear wizards for configuring the software to access all of the rich features offered in the solution, including shared calendars, document folders and global address lists.

For Administrators – Our administrative console provides an easy and straightforward  interface to set up e-mail accounts, create and manage global address lists and manage quotas and business rules.

If I sign up, how long will it be until I can start using the system?

Once you’ve signed-up, you’ll receive an e-mail with step-by-step instructions on how to configure end users and how to create and administer your e-mail. We’ll give you all of the information you need to login, set up users, set up quotas, and get started. There may be a slight delay (a couple of hours max) while your new e-mail solution is registered on the Internet.