Hosted Exchange - Frequently Asked Questions

Will you increase the price once I'm actively using and dependent on the service?

Absolutely not. Historically, the cost per user for hosted messaging solutions has remained steady or even declined while the breadth of features, benefits and capabilities continues to increase and improve. Business-class messaging will continue to be a critical tool for your employee's efficiency and effectiveness and you will have a predictable, monthly cost.

I've heard response times and download times for e-mail and attachments in a hosted environment are quite slow?

With a modern broadband connection, most customers have more than enough connectivity speed to never notice a difference between a messaging solution they manage themselves 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, regardless of location, and don’t need to struggle with firewalls that can significantly slow access.

Won't I have more control with an in-house solution?

You retain the key control to manage and customize your messaging solution. While we assume responsibility for many of the overwhelming 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 and consoles to control user accounts, manage quotas, create mailing lists and manage folders. As a result, you retain control of the critical business components of the messaging solution while we focus on the underlying operations.

I'm concerned about data privacy and security. Won't I be able to better protect my messaging solution by keeping it in house?

Data privacy and security is a very serious topic. We approach this issue from three directions. They are:

Anti-Virus and Anti-SPAM Solutions – Viruses, worms and the impact of spam can all have significant and catastrophic impacts on not only e-mail data, but also a company's entire information technology system. We use core Microsoft Exchange anti-SPAM capabilities and anti-virus. Every message is scanned for viruses both inbound and outbound, and the servers and stored documents are also scanned.
Backup and Disaster Recovery – Our messaging solution, including all of our customers' data, is backed up incrementally every night and completely every week. These backups are maintained for one week within the backup system and are maintained and archived off-site.
Data Privacy – Every customer's data source is protected from outside access through a robust security, intrusion detection and firewall solution. Every customer's data is logically segregated and protected from other customers to prevent in appropriate data access.

I can't afford to lost my critical business data and am subject to compliance and regulatory requirements for retention. Can you help my compliance?

Obviously regulatory compliance is a complex issue, but we strongly believe that our business-class messaging solution provides a number of features that will feed into your compliance obligations for data retention and archiving. Our messaging solution, including all of our customers' data, is backed up incrementally every night and completely every week. These backups are maintained for one week within the backup system and are maintained and archived off-site. We encourage all of our customers to incorporate the specific features of our offering into their overall compliance strategy.

My current solution is free or less expensive. Why would I spend more just for e-mail?

Today, messaging solutions, including e-mail, are a critical component of business. Loss of communications and messaging capability can translate to lost revenue, lost customers, and inability to perform work, and at a minimum idle and unproductive employees. E-mail is never free, because the cost of downtime for a 'good enough' solution can be crippling.

Further, our business-class messaging solution offers far more than just e-mail. It includes:

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

Blackberry and Microsoft ActiveSync mobile solutions that enable employees to access mail, calendars, contacts and tasks wherever they are:

Advanced anti-SPAM and anti-Virus protection to eliminate the annoyance of unwanted e-mails and the risk of downtime
Comprehensive archiving and backup solutions to protect critical business e-mails, contacts and data

So while business-class messaging does cost $XX/user/month, the value in terms of employee productivity, efficiency and effectiveness far outweighs the predictable monthly cost.

What happens if something goes wrong? I'm worried about customer service and timely follow-up- my business can't survive without email!

One of the benefits of our Hosted business-class messaging 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 operations resources available around the clock that are proactively monitoring the system for troubles 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, the operators will escalate the ticket to a senior engineer for resolution.

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

We have focused on making our business-class messaging solution as simple and easy to use as possible for everyone in your organization, including end users and administrators.

For Users - If you don't already use Microsoft Outlook 2003, 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 a simple interface to set up e-mail accounts, create and manage global address lists and manage quotas and business rules. If your administrator ever has any questions about the tool set, they can access our online knowledge base for quick answers or call customer support to get more detailed instructions.

What will my experience be like from when I sign up? How long will it take for me to begin using the system?

Once you complete the sign-up process, you will receive an e-mail that provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to configure end user clients to use the new messaging capabilities as well as instructions on how to create and administer your e-mail boxes. These e-mails will include all of the information you need to login, set up users, set up quotas, and begin using the platform. At most, you should expect a 1-2 hour delay to ensure that your new e-mail solution has been registered on the Internet, but typically this occurs much quicker.