Looking for an Email Service/Hosting 1

[ppark001]

I am looking for an email service.


We currently have Microsoft Exchange 5.5 with NT4. Maintenance is a big issue/expense. I looked into upgrading to Exchange 2003. But then I received the quote to upgrade. The price is astounding with the CAL licensing!. We would need about 200 CALs because between groups & and pager emails the numbers get up there. By the way, is it true that when I install Exchange 2003 and Advanced Server 2003 on our server, I have to get CAL licenses for BOTH applications? That doesn’t seem right. That would mean that if I only use the server for email, I would need one CAL to access the server and one to access Exchange?

So, I am wondering about outsourcing email but don’t know where to even start looking.

The first thing I wondered was the pros and cons of in-house vs. outsourcing. At this point, I am wondering if a relatively small to mid-size company like us should even have in-house Microsoft Exchange. Along with support labor time, upgrades, patches, security etc. and now with Microsoft CAL licensing, it seems like a no brainer. We only use Microsoft Exchange for email.

Then the next question of course is outsourcing. We would want a service that provides us all the goodies of the email aspects of Exchange, without all the headache. We would need lots of storage space and speed. And of course, we don’t want a company that will lose our data, or go out of business.

Could someone get me started in my research?


Thanks so Much!

 

[Zelandakh]

Exchange is recommended from about 10 users upwards. To get enough speed you would need to have Exchange on a 10mb/s line to your provider. That will cost tens of thousands.

Yes, Exchange 2003 and Windows 2003 with 200 CALs is not going to be the cheapest in the world. But look at the business benefit of email for this number of users.

Why is your maintenance so high? For 200 users, in house should take you about 30 minutes per day unless you have a large turnover of staff. If that is the case, outsourcing by the hour will be expensive. What costs so much (don't name names!)?

Do you really need to upgrade? 5.5 is a great system, NT is stable. If you don't need the toys, stay as you are and just upgrade Outlook. Or upgrade and then Outlook is free (consider it the cost of the Exchange CAL).

To access the Windows server you need one Windows CAL.
To access email, you need one Exchange CAL.

Such is life. But you do get a copy of Outlook 2003 into the bargain - useful for non Office users. Also, OWA, OMA...

 

[ppark001]

Thanks, I need to hear the other side.

The reason Exchange has been so expensive is because it has crashed about 2-3 times a month for a year. I called in an Exchange consultant and he diagnosed a lot of issues. Two main issues were 1) there was only 5% space available on the C drive for a long time, and 2) the recovery c.d. was full of corrupt files.

Anyway...he did a fresh install and like you feels that it will be ok, given proper maintainance.

I have been trying to get our Network Administrator to fix these issues for a long time but he basically ignored me. So perhaps I am being reactionary after a 48 hour recovery from a crashed system. Perhaps with maintenance guidelines from our new Exchange consultant we can stick with our current arrangement.

Thanks for another opinion!