Intermedia enables managed service providers a turn-key hosted Exchange 2010 solution that provides additional revenue without increasing support requirements. The world’s largest provider of hosted Exchange, Intermedia was the first to offer hosted Exchange 2007 and currently has more than 225,000 premium Exchange mailboxes under management.
Archive for the 'Hosted Exchange 2010' tag
Intermedia Launches Industry First 100% Data Protection Guarantee
First 100% Data Protection Guarantee in Exchange Hosting Industry: Intermedia pushes industry toward greater operational and technical transparency
Today we announced that our hosted Exchange 2010 service includes a 100 percent Data Protection Guarantee. The public guarantee is a first among top software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers and is designed to give customers and partners full confidence that their business-critical data is safe with Intermedia.
“Whenever organizations entrust their data to a third-party, whether via a cloud computing service or a traditional outsourcing arrangement, it’s important to evaluate the vendor’s technical and operational capabilities to fully protect the data,” says Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director of analyst firm THINKstrategies and founder of the SaaS Showplace. “We recommend businesses carefully evaluate the vendors’ ability to verify they have the proper back-up and recovery systems as well as the policies in place to safeguard their records, such as Intermedia’s Data Protection Guarantee.”
“The cost of data loss to a business is too great not to be protected 100 percent,” says Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer, Intermedia. “Intermedia guarantees not only the reliability of our service, but the complete safety of our customers’ data. Our customers can have peace of mind knowing that their data and communications are protected from any eventuality.”
Click here to read the news release.
What To Look For in an Exchange 2010 Hosting Provider
With the launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010, Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the third in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.
Not all hosted Exchange providers are created equal. There are often important distinctions between even leading vendors, and so decision makers should evaluate providers based on their specific requirements. Here are some of the key issues to consider when evaluating providers of hosted Exchange services.
MULTIPLE DATA CENTERS
Does the provider operate multiple data centers? If so, are these data centers served by multiple, Tier 1 Internet providers? These are important considerations for disaster recovery purposes, but they can also permit greater levels of uptime compared to a provider that operates only one data center or that does not use highly available Internet providers.
Further, the use of multiple data centers allows the use of a data center that is geographically closer to users and so can provide better messaging system performance. Related to this is the ability to specify which data center serves which mailboxes, something that not all hosted Exchange providers offer.
THE PROVIDER’S TRACK RECORD
The provider’s track record is another important consideration. How long have they been in operation? What are their long-term uptime numbers? What is their past and current financial performance? How many customers do they have? All of these questions should be answered satisfactorily.
THE PROVIDER’S LONG-TERM ROADMAP
A provider’s long-term roadmap of planned feature and function enhancements is also an important consideration in choosing a provider. When will they migrate to the newest version of Exchange? Do they offer hosted SharePoint or OCS? Do they offer hosted archiving? What other services, features and functions are on their long-term roadmap? How consistent have they been in deploying new services, features and functions in years past?
THE COST AND PAIN OF MIGRATING TO A NEW PROVIDER
Another important consideration in choosing a provider of hosted Exchange 2010 is the tools and services they offer to help in the migration of data, either from another hosted Exchange provider or from an on-premises deployment of Exchange. This is an important issue, since the migration can be time-consuming and somewhat onerous if the wrong provider is chosen.
THE PROVIDER’S SUPPORT CAPABILITIES
It is also important to understand the specific support capabilities that a hosted provider offers. For example, how long will the provider’s support organization take to respond to an inquiry during business hours? After-hours on weekdays? At 3:00am on a Saturday night? Further, what other support capabilities does the provider offer for tech support staff and end users?
Gartner’s SaaS Revenue Predictions
This week, Gartner predicted that worldwide SaaS revenues would grow by 18 percent in 2009. From our perspective, this aggressive prediction – totally at odds with the generally gloomy economic picture – is quite right. Salesforce, the SaaS industry bellwether, continues to grow revenues above 20%, and Microsoft is experiencing very rapid SaaS growth, albeit from a lower base.
Here at Intermedia we are also growing faster than this, but our partners are far exceeding the 18% figure. Exchange and related services revenues for our private label Exchange hosting partners are growing in the region of 65 % per year – and this should only increase further with the recent launch of hosted Exchange 2010.
Gartner does break out different segments of SaaS. Intermedia would fall under the ‘content, communications and collaboration’ group (try saying that 10 times, quickly!), which is predicted to grow around 20% in 2009. Outsourcing business email and unified communications is a logical step for many companies, and often a ‘first taste’ of how well it can work to outsource critical systems to specialist companies.
It seems then that SMBs – which we serve here at Intermedia – are adopting SaaS more rapidly than the market at large. Still, the 18% growth rate for SaaS across the board is still impressive, especially in light of Gartner’s prediction of a 5.2% decline for IT spending as a whole in 2009.
Why Use Hosted Exchange
With this week’s launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010, Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the second in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.
REDUCED PER-SEAT COSTS, ESPECIALLY FOR SMALLER ORGANIZATIONS
Although there are many reasons that organizations should consider the use of hosted Exchange, perhaps the most important reason is its ability to significantly reduce the cost of overall Exchange management. This has traditionally be a chief argument used in attempting to convince very small organizations of the need for hosted Exchange given that the smaller the organization, the higher their per-seat costs for Exchange and other messaging functionality.
However, the ability to cut the cost of Exchange management through hosting is by no means limited simply to small organizations. Much larger organizations – those with hundreds and even thousands of users – can also realize significant cost savings by migrating to hosted Exchange and away from an on-premises Exchange environment. While the cost differences may be most pronounced for the smallest of organizations, even large organizations can see significant reductions in their total cost of managing Exchange by moving to a hosted model for some or all of their users.
MORE PREDICTABLE INVESTMENTS
Closely related to the overall cost savings available in a hosted Exchange model is the more predictable nature of costs with hosted Exchange. Because virtually all hosted providers commit to a fixed cost per seat over the life of an annual or multi-year contract, decision makers can know what the cost of Exchange management will be over the life of the contract. On-premises deployments, on the other, hand, can sometimes necessitate new servers or appliances as a result of rapid increases in the volume of spam or the addition of new users.
MORE EFFICIENT USE OF IT STAFF MEMBERS
A hosted Exchange model can also make best use of scarce IT staff members, allowing them to be used for projects or initiatives that can provide more value to an organization. For example, despite the mission-critical nature of messaging, using seasoned IT staff members to manage Exchange servers, apply patches and the like may not be the best of their time or talent. Instead, using these staff members for initiatives that can provide a differentiation for a company – such as using them to deploy customer-facing technologies to shorten tech support wait times – might be the better choice.
HIGHER LEVELS OF UPTIME
Osterman Research has found that many organizations do not achieve the 99.9% uptime that most hosted Exchange providers guarantee as part of their Service Level Agreement. Hosted Exchange providers can offer a very high level of uptime, usually exceeding that of most on-premises deployments.
BETTER SECURITY AGAINST SPAM AND MALWARE
Leading hosted Exchange providers typically offer very robust security capabilities through the use of multiple malware- and spam-filtering technologies, carrier-grade firewalls and other security measures that often would be cost-prohibitive for their customers to deploy and support. The result of using a hosted Exchange provider is typically (but not always) a higher spam and malware capture rate, lower false positives, and a reduced possibility of malware infiltration.
DATA PROTECTION
Another important benefit of using hosted Exchange is that leading providers will back up their customers’ data and provide rapid data recovery in the event of a server outage or other unforeseen problem. Further, hosted Exchange can provide protection against natural disasters, fires, power outages, floods and other disrupting events that can knock on-premises email systems out for days or weeks. This is particularly true for hosted Exchange providers that operate multiple data centers and replicate customer data to at least two geographically distributed data centers.
Who Should Migrate to Exchange 2010
With yesterday’s launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010, Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the first in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.
WHO SHOULD CONSIDER MIGRATING TO EXCHANGE 2010
Any organization that uses Exchange should seriously consider migrating to the newest version of the system. There are a number of reasons to do so, including the ability to significantly lower the cost of ownership, a wider range of storage options that can be used in the new system and thereby driving costs lower, better archiving to enable improved regulatory and legal compliance, and a better user experience that can make individual users more efficient. Plus, as noted above, organizations that may want to one day migrate to unified communications will have a solid foundation available on which to build their unified communications capabilities.
Further, organizations of all sizes should consider deploying Exchange 2010 as a hosted service. Doing so, particularly for those organizations that have up to 500 users, can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership for Exchange, provide more predictable costs, improve the effectiveness of IT staff members, improve uptime for end users, provide better protection against spam and malware, and improve the overall resiliency of the system. It is also important to consider using a hosted Exchange provider that can provide necessary capabilities and that has a solid roadmap for deploying future services.
Intermedia Launches First Hosted Exchange 2010 Service
We are pleased to announce that we just launched the first hosted Exchange 2010 service.
The launch comes directly on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement of the availability of its Exchange Server 2010 software. Our hosted service is available to direct customers and affiliates, adding key features such as support for BlackBerry® wireless solution and free migration from legacy versions of Exchange. Microsoft partners wishing to resell hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010 under their own brand will be able to offer Intermedia’s private label platform later in 2009.
“Intermedia was the first to market with hosted Exchange 2007 and now hosted Exchange 2010,” says Serguei Sofinski, Intermedia’s chief executive officer. “This is about more than innovation for innovation’s sake. We are serving our customers and our partners with sophisticated Fortune 500-grade systems – but in a way that is deeply practical for small- and medium-sized businesses.”
“Exchange 2010 is a powerful tool for Microsoft as it defends its email and collaboration market leadership against online services like Google Apps,” adds Michael Osterman of industry analyst firm Osterman Research. “Microsoft built Exchange 2010 to be delivered as a reliable online service, both from its partners and Microsoft itself. But most small- and medium-sized businesses require more than an online service. They require a range of capabilities around the service, from help with migration to a control panel that makes it simple to administrate Exchange. By addressing these issues, Intermedia continues to position itself as a leading, full-service provider of hosted messaging services. Any small- to medium-sized business considering migration to Exchange 2010 should give Intermedia a very close look.”
Read the Intermedia hosted Exchange 2010 launch press release.
Microsoft Exchange 2010 Considerations
With the Microsoft Exchange 2010 release coming soon, Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the second in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “An Overview of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010” by The Radicati Group, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.
Why Businesses Should Consider Upgrading to Microsoft Exchange 2010
Businesses should have few concerns about upgrading to Microsoft Exchange 2010. Microsoft Exchange 2010 is a top-of-the-line messaging and collaboration suite that features new and cutting-edge technology. In particular, businesses should consider upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 for the following reasons:
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 enhances the experience of business users on the go, offering them multiple ways of accessing their inbox, from any web browser using Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), or mobile device using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) or Microsoft Outlook Voice Access (OVA).
- Archiving and retention introduced in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 gives IT administrators greater control over historical email records, necessary for compliance with government rules and regulations.
- For the first time, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was developed with built-in hosted capabilities, allowing service providers to offer a reliable Microsoft Hosted Exchange service to subscribers. Also, enhanced high availability and disaster recovery features minimize of unplanned downtime, ensuring that businesses will have continual access to their email accounts.
Microsoft Exchange 2010 Key Areas of Functionality
With Microsoft Exchange 2010 launching soon, Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the first in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “An Overview of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010” by The Radicati Group, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.
Microsoft Exchange 2010: Four Key Areas of Functionality
With the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft is greatly enhancing many of the features it was already delivering in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and for the first time, the platform is developed with built-in hosting capabilities, providing subscribers with a more reliable Microsoft Hosted Exchange service.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 focuses on four key areas of functionality:
- High Availability and Disaster Recovery (DR) – While some organizations may still be skeptical about hosted solutions, especially due to concerns over possible outages, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 has greatly improved high availability and disaster recovery features on the backend to ensure business continuity in case of an unexpected event.
- Control of Information Overload – As email users are oftentimes overwhelmed with the large number of emails they receive each day, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 now includes features that will help control the amount of information overload that builds up in users’ inboxes.
- Anywhere Access – Business users increasingly need access to email when they are outside the office, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 offers multiple ways for business users to access their email, whether it be from other computers while traveling or from a mobile device.
- Archiving and Compliance – Many businesses nowadays are required to comply with government rules and regulations for information retention. Microsoft’s new archiving and retention features, built-into Microsoft Exchange 2010, will help businesses address this need, providing IT administrators with the necessary tools for storing historical email records.
Intermedia to Offer Free Migrations to Hosted Exchange 2010 Upon Service’s Debut
Intermedia is making Exchange hosting upgrades simple and cost-effective with our proprietary tools and Exchange Concierge™ service. When Exchange 2010 launches we’re offering free migrations to our hosted Exchange 2010 customers. Migrations will be performed by our Exchange Concierge™ team using proprietary tools we developed for hosted Exchange 2003 and 2007. The tools are being readied for use with hosted Exchange 2010, in part through the hosted Exchange 2010 beta we launched in May 2009.
The free migration offer will be open to new customers as well as existing customers that choose to upgrade to an Exchange 2010 hosting plan.
We forsee free migration to hosted Exchange as of particular interest to the many small and medium-sized businesses that require upgrade from Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003. The proprietary tools Intermedia custom-built are critical to the successful outsourcing of email for small and medium-sized businesses. We are able to handle migrations at no additional cost to our customers, minimize disruption to their business and preserve the value of their existing Exchange set-up.
Today we provide the Exchange Concierge service as part of its hosted Exchange 2007 offering. The service uses proprietary tools, including:
- Intermedia’s PST Manager– which enables importing and exporting mail data directly from HostPilot® Control Panel, Intermedia’s proprietary control panel
- Intermedia’s ROH Data Manager – which allows the seamless pull of mail data remotely from an in-house Exchange environment securely over the Internet
- Mass User Creation Wizard – which enables rapid creation of an Exchange account, including mailboxes, contacts, distribution groups, email addresses and contact information that match what exists within the client’s current in-house Exchange and Active Directory
Click here for information on our Exchange 2010 beta.
Intermedia adds first compliance features to hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta
Today we enhanced our hosted Exchange 2010 beta offering – the world’s first – with two new features. This feature set leaves us positioned for a production-ready experience. Michael Osterman of industry analyst firm Osterman Research comments that Intermedia “…is leading the charge for hosted Exchange 2010…” Read more about the new features and more on what Mr. Osterman has to say here.