Thoughts on hosted MS Exchange?

[Russ Smith]

One of the higher ups is pushing for us to switch to Hosted Microsoft Exchange, hosted by Microsoft. It's apparently 4 bucks per user per month so would cost us about 2400 a year.

We currently use Outlook via a pop server and pay $99.95 a year! That's going up soon as I had to expand the number of users allowed, it will be about $110 per year after that.

The reason for the discussion is user complaints about things like scheduling conference rooms, can do on exchange, can't do on the current setup, scheduling meetings, synching with phones etc.

Looking online there seems to be mostly positive comments but one of the most common ones is all the money you'll save, clearly we will be spending an extra 2K although I suspect we'll probably get that back in productivity.

Just wondering if anybody has any recent experience with this, I don't want to be the guy who decides to switch email and then causes the whole company email system to go down.

 

[Chaz]

One of the higher ups is pushing for us to switch to Hosted Microsoft Exchange, hosted by Microsoft. It's apparently 4 bucks per user per month so would cost us about 2400 a year.

We currently use Outlook via a pop server and pay $99.95 a year! That's going up soon as I had to expand the number of users allowed, it will be about $110 per year after that.

The reason for the discussion is user complaints about things like scheduling conference rooms, can do on exchange, can't do on the current setup, scheduling meetings, synching with phones etc.

Looking online there seems to be mostly positive comments but one of the most common ones is all the money you'll save, clearly we will be spending an extra 2K although I suspect we'll probably get that back in productivity.

Just wondering if anybody has any recent experience with this, I don't want to be the guy who decides to switch email and then causes the whole company email system to go down.

Exchange is definitely the way to go in a business environment. Sent items, deleted items, calendars, contacts all synced between multiple computers or devices and shared with multiple users or groups.

Office 365 Exchange is good value. I have heard some complaints but I have been using over a year with excellent results. You can also look at Intermedia which I have heard good things about. If you want to go with Office 365 and have questions or need help professional help with setup/migration let me know.

 

[Russ Smith]

Exchange is definitely the way to go in a business environment. Sent items, deleted items, calendars, contacts all synced between multiple computers or devices and shared with multiple users or groups.

Office 365 Exchange is good value. I have heard some complaints but I have been using over a year with excellent results. You can also look at Intermedia which I have heard good things about. If you want to go with Office 365 and have questions or need help professional help with setup/migration let me know.

That's actually my first question what is the difference between MS Exchange hosted by MS, and Office 365? They're both Microsoft.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans-FX103764022.aspx

Seems like the only difference is 365 has user limits we're over 25(nearly 50) so we'd have to take the option that's 15 per user per month whereas with hosted exchange it's $4 per user per month. So given that why would any company around 50 people ever choose 365, there has to be something I'm missing?

FYI I am in full agreement we should go that way, I hate not having mail synched on my phone and what I really hate is what's happened twice in the last 4 months where a user had a major computer issue(thermal issue both times) and then we found out they'd intentionally removed their email from the daily backup (because it is a big file it slowed it down they both said). So they then said can't you just take it off the server and we said no your PST file is local on your machine the only backup there is, is the one done every night and you don't have one because you removed it from your backup.

That won't happen again if we go hosted exchange.

 

[Chaz]

That's actually my first question what is the difference between MS Exchange hosted by MS, and Office 365? They're both Microsoft.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans-FX103764022.aspx

Seems like the only difference is 365 has user limits we're over 25(nearly 50) so we'd have to take the option that's 15 per user per month whereas with hosted exchange it's $4 per user per month. So given that why would any company around 50 people ever choose 365, there has to be something I'm missing?

FYI I am in full agreement we should go that way, I hate not having mail synched on my phone and what I really hate is what's happened twice in the last 4 months where a user had a major computer issue(thermal issue both times) and then we found out they'd intentionally removed their email from the daily backup (because it is a big file it slowed it down they both said). So they then said can't you just take it off the server and we said no your PST file is local on your machine the only backup there is, is the one done every night and you don't have one because you removed it from your backup.

That won't happen again if we go hosted exchange.

It is just a part of Office 365 that can be licensed by itself. The concept to get is the Office 365 is the service that has Exchange, Sharepoint, OneDrive, and web or desktop versions of Office 2013. Only the Office 2013 is the desktop office software people think of as MS Office. Also the small business plans and the enterprise plans are completely different products and teams within Microsoft.

Both exchange plans (plan 1 or plan 2) are enterprise level plans that do not have user limits.

See the table for all plans including the enterprise versions.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/b...ffice-365-for-business-plans-FX104051403.aspx

 

[jf-08]

We use MEx and love it.

Several calendars for different departments are available, syncing is never a problem, and it works seamlessly with all different mobile platforms.

Used to be with Mail Street, but now MEx as a host.

 

[Russ Smith]

thanks yes hosted exchange plan 1 is the one we'd be looking at. We do have lots of people on Office 2013 now so I'm aware of skydrive and I've seen quite a bit of advertising for 365 but never really looked into it.

I looked at Rackspace which seems to be one of the biggest players in this area too, they're $10 a user, they offer bigger storage and bigger file size per message and from what I've found online their customer service is far superior to MS, but then even people who complained about MS's service level admitted the service almost never goes down so CS is less of a problem. I guess they had a 6 hour outage a couple of weeks ago that irritated lots of people but that's apparently very rare.

 

[Linderbee]

I've worked for a company that used Rackspace and my current employer uses Intermedia. I have personally found that Intermedia has had fewer issues with outages, etc., but it was years ago that I had Rackspace. Both seemed very good, overall though, in my opinion.

 

[puckhead]

Exchange is definitely the way to go in a business environment. Sent items, deleted items, calendars, contacts all synced between multiple computers or devices and shared with multiple users or groups.

...

Wholeheartedly agree. Amazing stuff. I couldn't live without it.

 

[Russ Smith]

Wholeheartedly agree. Amazing stuff. I couldn't live without it.

Yeah unfortunately the one guy who has to be onboard, the CEO, isn't.

 

[82CardsGrad]

Yeah unfortunately the one guy who has to be onboard, the CEO, isn't. He called me in Thursday and essentially said I don't want to spend 2500 a year on it when I get email for 100 a year right now.

So I setup conference room calendars on Google Calendar and on a site called Team Up, both free, and he's going to decide which we prefer.

Completely silly, neither site allows you to check who's available, you can schedule the room but the people in the meeting might not be there. No syncing of messages etc. It's a completely short sighted approach but he's the CEO what do you do, until he changes his mind.

This might be a stupid question Russ... but, have you thought about buying an exchange server and hosting it yourself??

 

[Russ Smith]

This might be a stupid question Russ... but, have you thought about buying an exchange server and hosting it yourself??

As a company? no that's even more expensive than the hosted one and the maintenance required is something we don't want right now.

It's the upfront cost he doesn't want to spring for so an exchange server we host is even more expensive up front.

 

[82CardsGrad]

As a company? no that's even more expensive than the hosted one and the maintenance required is something we don't want right now.

It's the upfront cost he doesn't want to spring for so an exchange server we host is even more expensive up front.

Got it... We bought a company in the UK that had been using Office 365 and they loved it! And I have to say, after I got to see it up close and personal, I was impressed...
However, for bigger organizations, I believe it would have it's limitations...

 

[Russ Smith]

Got it... We bought a company in the UK that had been using Office 365 and they loved it! And I have to say, after I got to see it up close and personal, I was impressed...
However, for bigger organizations, I believe it would have it's limitations...

Based on further info it's looking very unlikely now. They connected me with Microsoft Partners which in this case is a company in Livermore. They are the one MS uses to do the migration of mailboxes. They told me it takes several weeks because they do it a few at a time very slowly and carefully to be sure everything works. As a result, they charge 100 to 200 per mail box! That's between 5 and 10K for us.

I asked if we can do the migration ourselves to cut costs and was told you can, but they strongly recommend against it. Among other things, MS intentionally "throttles back the upload speed" so that uploading your PST files will take 8-12 hours per file. This means it not only takes forever to do, it greatly increases the likelihood of the connection dropping or the file being corrupted during transmission. Partners get an unthrottled pipe to upload it, individual companies don't.

Pretty surprising if true it's damn near collusion?

 

[Chaz]

Based on further info it's looking very unlikely now. They connected me with Microsoft Partners which in this case is a company in Livermore. They are the one MS uses to do the migration of mailboxes. They told me it takes several weeks because they do it a few at a time very slowly and carefully to be sure everything works. As a result, they charge 100 to 200 per mail box! That's between 5 and 10K for us.

I asked if we can do the migration ourselves to cut costs and was told you can, but they strongly recommend against it. Among other things, MS intentionally "throttles back the upload speed" so that uploading your PST files will take 8-12 hours per file. This means it not only takes forever to do, it greatly increases the likelihood of the connection dropping or the file being corrupted during transmission. Partners get an unthrottled pipe to upload it, individual companies don't.

Pretty surprising if true it's damn near collusion?

Not buying it. They are just using better tools.


If you are just migrating from PST files it should not be that difficult. Granted 50 users can be a pain and uploading all at once will be a bandwidth issue. The time it takes will depend on the amount of data you are trying to push into the mailbox. This can be mitigated by archiving the PST first so it is smaller. Calendar and Contact info is very little data and can be imported quickly. Most of the problem I have seen is when people have 4 years of deleted and sent items in the PST that they never clean out. Only uploading a limited amount of old emails at first will help ease the transition and they will still have the old email in a pst in Outlook just not in the cloud at first.

Using Outlook to import the data into Office 365 is easy. The hard part will organizing 50 users to manage their pst files prior to importing them.


In my search I found this migration tool that looks promising:
http://www.messageops.com/office-365-exchange-migrator/import-pst-files-to-office-365/

General useful info:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...ice-365-for-business-account-HA103169067.aspx

Using Outlook to upload pst file information:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...nts-HA104218074.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA103169067

 

[Russ Smith]

Not buying it. They are just using better tools.


If you are just migrating from PST files it should not be that difficult. Granted 50 users can be a pain and uploading all at once will be a bandwidth issue. The time it takes will depend on the amount of data you are trying to push into the mailbox. This can be mitigated by archiving the PST first so it is smaller. Calendar and Contact info is very little data and can be imported quickly. Most of the problem I have seen is when people have 4 years of deleted and sent items in the PST that they never clean out. Only uploading a limited amount of old emails at first will help ease the transition and they will still have the old email in a pst in Outlook just not in the cloud at first.

Using Outlook to import the data into Office 365 is easy. The hard part will organizing 50 users to manage their pst files prior to importing them.


In my search I found this migration tool that looks promising:
http://www.messageops.com/office-365-exchange-migrator/import-pst-files-to-office-365/

General useful info:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...ice-365-for-business-account-HA103169067.aspx

Using Outlook to upload pst file information:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...nts-HA104218074.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA103169067

That's essentially what we thought we'd be doing, telling people to delete old trashed and sent emails, compress the PST files and then upload them to MS for them to use in the new Exchange email accounts.

This partner company is saying MS makes that much harder than you'd think it should be but of course they have incentive we'd be paying them thousands of dollars to do it.


If money was no object I'd prefer to have someone else do it, our track record here with trusting users to do anything on their own is pretty bad. I just spent 15 minutes on the phone helping a guy who is now in Florida change the Outlook settings on his computer. He was supposed to change them 2 years ago when we stopped using Yahoo as our email provider, never did and now wondered why it stopped working. Nice guy but has a very thick Russian accent, doesn't hear too well, and we were both on speaker phones.

Finally got it all working when he let on it wasn't actually his new desktop it was his old one. his old desktop resides in teh computer room 30 feet from where I sit in California, he remotes to it by laptop. Had he told me that I could have literally walked into the computer room and done it myself!

Oh well, if we do anything with exchange my guess is it will be a few months out after we build a groundswell of support from employees to push for it. Right now the upfront cost is apparently a deal breaker.

Appreciate the help though if we wind up doing it on our own this thread will be quite useful.

 

[Covert Rain]

I know at our work we host our own MS Exchange environment for many of the reasons in the original post above but also because at our company we can't depend on outside vendors hosting our environment from a risk perspective. I don't know anybody who works for a company where MS hosts it for them. It sounds like for your size company that might be the best bet but it sounds like it's also cost prohibitive which sucks. You would think there would be less of a cost barrier for smaller companies who are not purchase Enterprise licenses and building out their own environments.

 

[Russ Smith]

I know at our work we host our own MS Exchange environment for many of the reasons in the original post above but also because at our company we can't depend on outside vendors hosting our environment from a risk perspective. I don't know anybody who works for a company where MS hosts it for them. It sounds like for your size company that might be the best bet but it sounds like it's also cost prohibitive which sucks. You would think there would be less of a cost barrier for smaller companies who are not purchase Enterprise licenses and building out their own environments.

I actually had a 10 minute phone conversation with the company in Livermore.

Our upload speed is .48MBPS he basically said at that speed with MS throttling back anyways I would be very unlikely to be able to upload even one compressed PST file let alone one after the other. He said it would almost certainly drop or time out. It would work going to them and them uploading, but not to MS. Again could be a scare tactic, you have to use us to upload it, but it is pretty slow upload.

they had originally told me our DSL connection wouldn't be a problem, MS that is but sounds like we'd have to upgrade that too.

Meanwhile it's been over a week and my boss has yet to add a thing to the free calendar i setup and he said he was going to do that, see how easy it was, and if he liked it then email the whole company with the link.