Thinking of taking your business to the next level? Want to give your business the snazzy and hi-tech look? Intend on keeping all your employees connected and alert for any emergencies and fast-paced business deals? Well, then it’s the time to go in for Microsoft Exchange Server. Beware though, as this baby from the software giant is definitely not meant for personal or even small to medium size businesses. This efficient yet complicated software needs extremely expensive hardware to be implemented and also requires constant checking by professional IT personnel. So do not go for it until it is really big enough so that the costs of running the server and software do not dent the profits.
Microsoft Exchange is basically what it’s name suggests; it is a server. This is a personalized and extremely handy server for business solutions. Exchange is the most popular messaging and collaboration service in the world. Exchange acts as a huge database and provides not only mail services but also help keep everyone in the network connected and allows easy information exchange. It has two basic divisions:
a) Mail server: This acts as a normal mail server and handles not only POP and IMAP mailing service but also the popular web based email clients. It also obviously incorporates the email client by Microsoft, Outlook.
b) Collaboration Server: This is what makes Microsoft Exchange so special. Collaboration server allows all users connected via Exchange to share information either through Outlook on their computers or through Outlook’s web-based application. It also unlocks Outlooks most valued collaborative feature: public folders. With this, all users can send and accept files, apply to calendars for scheduling dates and meetings or even check up on reservations on common resources like conference rooms, etc. There is also a common address book for sharing contact information.
Previously, Exchange hosting was quite a tedious and costly endeavor that only big companies could think about implementing. But nowadays lots of private web-hosting companies have started “Exchange hosting” as well. These companies allow you to buy server facilities and provide you with a limited number of client handling capabilities. The buyer does not have access to the main server and needs to pay the fees to Exchange hosting company on a monthly/yearly basis. This removes the complications of purchasing and maintaining Microsoft Exchange on your own; and is really quite helpful to those small and medium sized businesses talked of before. If you are in this category and want to go in for Exchange then pay a visit to Exchange hosting site, Mi8.
The last edition to the Microsoft arsenal, Exchange Server 2007, comes with an array of new and improved features. The maximum database size has been increased to a whopping 16TB – ensuring that an amount of data remain on the server without needing frequent deleting. It also incorporates new anti-virus scanners, anti-spam and anti-spyware detection units. The GUI has been simplified and 64-bit support has been added. “Unified Messaging” has been introduced in this version that allows users to receive and send voicemail, emails and faxes in their inboxes and also retrieve these from mobile devices. Users can even listen to their emails over the phone and send back basic replies, with “I’ll be late!” being the most common.
Microsoft has recently come up with its latest, Exchange Server 2010. This is basically an improvement on the previous Server 2007. It boasts of lower costs in messaging and higher flexibility in hardware. Exchange 2010 also has higher storage space for databases, greater data protection, larger mailbox sizes and also incorporates Outlook Web app. that allows access on-the-go facilities.
By Pete
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Collaborating through Outlook makes my work life so much easier. And I don’t even have to see my coworkers when we’re working together on a project, another major plus.