Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft Exchange’

Hosted Exchange Archiving Solutions

January 25th, 2011

In these austere times, it’s difficult for businesses to countenance expending large amounts of money on new IT systems or upgrades. Technology departments are often targeted for cuts as they have one of the largest budgets in an organization. When it comes to Exchange archiving solutions, there is a compromise available to save money, without compromising functionality, and we will discuss it here.

The traditional method of hosting email servers in-house has pervaded business for many years. It retains control, security and for a while, was the only way to do things. The advent of service providers who offered hosted versions of these systems offered a different way of doing things.

For a while, the uptake was limited to new and smaller business. These were most likely to appreciate that an in-house system was too expensive, and a little overkill for their needs. Also, traditionally, new businesses are much more open to new ways of doing things, which helped the hosted model take off.

The main problem the hosted model faces is trust. With a traditional Exchange archiving solution, everything was controlled internally. If there was a data leak or disaster, the business only had themselves to blame. With a hosting provider, the organization is trusting them to take as much care of their data as they would themselves.

That isn’t such a big deal now the software as a service sector has become more formalized. It’s in the service providers interest to maintain data security. It’s also part of the law governing Exchange archiving solutions. Just because the provider doesn’t generate the emails, doesn’t mean they are exempt from the legislative requirements governing them.

The ability to have a fully-supported system that is secure, up-to-date and maintained round the clock is a tempting prospect for organizations who don’t want the expense of setting one up for themselves. The hosted model is ideal for those in that situation. The main consideration is the choice of service provider, which is now easier than ever now there are some established names in the market.

The SaaS industry has been around long enough to have generated reputations for those who are good, and those who aren’t. A little research can provide a list of suitable candidates from which to begin negotiations. There are some large, well-known names in the market who offer SaaS as part of an overall product strategy.

There are also those who specialize in SaaS, or even in email archiving alone. Demand is such that these businesses often succeed where others don’t. The choice of who to do business with is down to the organization, but fortunately, there are now plenty to choose from.

Exchange Hosting & Exchange archiving solutions are ideal for organizations who either don’t want to set up their own messaging infrastructure, or those who aren’t yet large enough to warrant one. It’s the ideal middle ground between control and security. SaaS is definitely something to consider when considering a new business, or new way of working.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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Why to upgrade with MSE 2010

December 27th, 2010

exchange-logoSome times a question arises as to why it is important to upgrade with Microsoft Exchange 2010 and for this there are many good reasons which will definitely satisfy you about this product and the benefit that can be received from this product.

Some of its best reasons to upgrade with Microsoft Exchange 2010 are, it will reduce deployment cost such as backup, email archive, mobile email access and voice mail.  Another benefit is high availability and scope to recover from disaster and this process is made very simple my Microsoft Exchange 2010. It also reduces the complexity and delivery of business continuity. It is also very easy to administer and decrease the dependence on the help desk.  There is also greater mobility and flexible access as MES offers a universal inbox experience which enables users to have access to their business communication from a single location.

Decreased inbox overload and increased productivity enables users to prioritize their communications in their inboxes efficiently. Transformed voice mail is also another added feature in MES 2010. Simplified compliance, safeguard of sensitive information and also reduces the risk of malware and spam which helps to sieve all the junk email and supports an array of third party security products.

The above points necessitate the upgrade with MES and it is important that clients must understand fully and completely about the usability of MES before they upgrade. As the benefits are evident, it will surely reward the business in its own way, giving plenty of scope to advantage and benefit from the features offered by MES.

As thousands of businesses are getting launched for every business, it is important to manage their social media compliance and databases very well and this can be perfectly achieved by MES with more accuracy and speed.

With the top benefits of MES it is now clear and evident that MES will surely achieve its objectives of giving more perfect service to the customers by this new product and it will surely yield good benefits to the businesses and customers who are in requirement high performance systems.

Fast pace communication being the core important area, MES fulfills and meets all the requirements to meet all the benefits and advantages of high quality and performance. This will definitely be a successful product for many customers. Microsoft will also be on the upfront for giving good customer service to its customers and also in getting to know their requirements.

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Posted in Exchange 2010

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Exchange 2010 Licensing and pricing

March 16th, 2010

For any important licensed product, there will be many restrictions on its purchase and Microsoft products are also in the same line that it requires licensing and pricing to purchase Microsoft products. Exchange Server 2010 offers three types of licenses which are server licenses, client access licenses and external connector licenses. Licenses are authorized certificates to use Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and this is very essential as using without permission will not yield good results and it also amounts to violation of copyrights. Therefore, Microsoft has offered licensing which permits customers to select a suitable type of license and gain benefit from ME 2010.

The IT market is already filled with lot of stuff that are purchased and used without license and customers cannot ask for any service or for an updation if purchased without license. This also indicates that customers have to lose their investments for purchasing products without license. Further license indicates legality and confirmation to use products under certain working environment which is acceptable to the Microsoft company. This is very important because of the fact that multinational companies use lot of equipment in researching a product and the assurance of quality with guarantee is made available only with the software giants which have high technology at its front to bring best products to the market.  Therefore practicing license formalities is very essential and it must strictly practiced by customers who wish to purchase Microsoft products.

Pricing is made suitably according to the technology used in development of a product and since this product is manufactured in United States and price is in U.S. dollars.  For instance there are several editions in Microsoft servers and each edition is differently priced and therefore, it is important to check each price and take it on note before purchasing it.   It is true that Microsoft products are highly priced and they are not definitely within the range of a middle income group level and therefore, corporate sector, industrial sector can derive huge benefit for setting up its IT department by installing ME 2010 in their office. Companies can definitely afford high prices as the investments for business will definitely be on a large scale.   So, in this pattern, Microsoft ensures that licensing and prices are both are followed by customers when a purchase has to be made from its web site.  It is also a fact that because of its professional working methods, Microsoft giant has become a very successful leader in leading the world.

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Database Corruption While Replication of Public folders

March 8th, 2010


While talking about Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s like a mandate to mention the public folders. The public folders contain user data as well as information critical to the system. The system information is needed for the swift operation of Exchange Server in the environment. Replication of the public folders is done in order to have better performance and effective and easy management of application.

Two types of replication are there: hierarchy replication and content replication. In some cases, replication of the public folders between the Microsoft Exchange Servers becomes troublesome. Replication may cause some inconsistencies in the database and render it inaccessible. These inconsistencies may cause severe data loss and may lead to database corruption while replication of public folders. Thus, need may arise for Exchange Repair using tools.

Practically, when public folder replication request is sent by a system running Microsoft Exchange Server, email scanning might also occur. Messaging Database may also get corrupted at the same time and you may encounter the following error message displayed on your screen:

“Multiple edits have been made. The conflicting edits have been attached to the conflict message.”

At this time, the public folders of the server may get inconsistent and inaccessible. It may lead to critical data loss and database corruption. The job of Exchange Server Administrator is to find out the cause of the problem and go about solving it.

Root cause of the Problem:

There may be cases that a database transaction is written inappropriately and there is an error. This can lead to an imbalanced Exchanged Server transaction state. If virus scanning is enabled, then imbalanced transaction state may promote virus scanning to be done on outbound replication emails. Database may also get corrupted due to imbalanced state of database transaction.

Resolution of the Problem:

To resolve these problems, a hot fix is provided by Microsoft on its website and is downloadable from there. After the installation of the hot fix, database integrity should always be checked by Isinteg.exe utility. The hot fix can solve the problem and the problem will not occur in the future. As far as damaged database is concerned, hot fix can’t repair it. Exchange Recovery is required for repairing and restoring the corrupted database.

There is an affective and advanced third party application available to resolve the problem, called Exchange Database Repair tools. An extensive scanning of corrupted Exchange Server is carried out by this software. The software restores all of the server’s objects intact. The software is equipped with easy graphical user and interactive interface, thus there is no need for prior and sound technical skills and you can save yourself from database corruption while replication of public folders.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange

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Exchange 2010 Transport Protection Rules

February 1st, 2010

One of the most important improvements in Exchange 2010 in my opinion is the new toolkit that allows administrators to implement policies that works with Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web Access too. The fact is offers many different tools that make Email Hosting better and easier to manage.

This is a significant step forward, as previously OWA was something of a unsubtle beast. You could either restrict access to mailboxes altogether or it was open season on emails. Now policies can be enforced across the board, whatever client the users prefer.

The Transport Protection Rules enable Exchange administrators to create rules that control every aspect of email, from content restrictions, size, approved recipients for sensitive emails, no copy and pasting and other neat tricks. While most of these features have been around in other incarnations, they have never been so easy to implement or ever worked with Outlook Web Access. The TPR system is new to Exchange 2010 and a welcome addition to the platform.

In a real life example of the TPR in action, say a project manager send a detailed email to his team listing a new product, it’s benefits, features and proposed release date. He can mark he email confidential so his people knew not to share it, which has always been the case. The mail would have a flag on it marking it as confidential.

Now, with Transport Protection Rules, Exchange can enforce a policy on confidential emails that includes not being able to forward them, copy and paste to or from them and other niceties. This means if someone absent mindedly forwarded it as part of a conversation the Exchange server would refuse. This is a significant step forward in information security, and allows administrators to control the flow of information with much more granularity than before.

Drilling deeper into the Transport Protection Rules, it’s also possible to restrict emails, by email address, location, recipient, whether it’s internal or external and a raft of other criteria. It also works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access too. Which is handy because Office 2010 doesn’t even have a release date yet.

The biggest bonus with these rules, and the closer integration with OWA is that everything will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer. No more will you need plugins to be able to enforce rules, or add functionality. Everything works out of the box, so Opera, Firefox or Safari users will also have full access to the available features, and also be subject to the Transport Protection Rules.

The Exchange 2010 was the largest beta Microsoft have ever run. From where I’m sitting, it was worth every minute. They have listened to feedback and integrated many of the improvements into the new system. While it’s still a big, cumbersome beast, it’s now a bit more manageable at least.

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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Features and Benefits of Microsoft Exchange

September 21st, 2009

microsoft-exchange

Microsoft Exchange was designed from the outset to be easy to maintain and manage throughout its operating lifetime. It delivers much improved communication capabilities to users while offering decent protection against outside attack.

One of the main benefits is remote access. Users no longer have to be in the office to access all the features of the system. They can be anywhere in the world with either an internet connection or a cell phone. All a users emails, calendars and contact lists can be made available no matter where they are.

Exchange, and it’s client, Outlook are now familiar throughout the world. The easy to learn, and use interface offers a single place to perform many forms of communication such as email, instant messaging, voicemail, fax and document storage. Text-to-speech features in later editions even added the option to have voicemail converted to text to read later.

Added compliance features help significantly in every organizations legal obligations to store and index email and electronic communications. It offers a secure storage facility where emails can be quickly archived, and retrieved as the various laws dictate. Exchange can also integrate with external storage mediums if space becomes an issue.

Built in spam protection features protects the infrastructure and the users from malicious or junk emails. Users won’t have to waste work time sorting through spam, or worry about viruses as the security system will check the emails before they are even delivered. Sophisticated filtering software keeps out the vast majority of junk mail without anyone even having to interact with it.

Some of the features of Exchange are;

Outlook auto-discover. This applet saves the time of the administrator by automatically configuring an account by searching for the email address input by a user and allowing access to the system. Account administration used to be one of the most time consuming jobs of any system technician.

The built-in search facility enables users to search emails and documents for a given term. This is a powerful tool, which can save a lot of time and effort when trying to retrieve an old mail or old information.

Outlook Web Access is also one of the major features of Exchange. It allows users to access their email and other tools from anywhere in the world.

Integrated encryption is also a feature of the platform. Emails can be sent and received securely using certificates. This protects the contents from malicious hackers or corporate raiders trying to gather information on an organization.

Document viewing tools enables users to view documents in all different formats directly from Outlook, even if the specific format reader isn’t installed on their machine. For example a user can read a PDF through Outlook without having Adobe Reader installed.

These few are just an overview of the features and benefits of using Microsoft Exchange. The full list would fill volumes, and would bore you long before you reached halfway. I hope these few are enough to pique enough interest to investigate further.

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Microsoft Exchange, get it hosted

September 21st, 2009

microsoft-exchange-server-hosting

As a small business owner, I have to consider all the elements that will make it an effective, viable venture. That includes everything from the coffee maker to the lighting, internet access to cell phones.

One of the biggest choices I had was whether to invest in an IT infrastructure to support me or not. I didn’t really want to borrow more money to build a whole network or server farm, then have to learn how to maintain or pay or employ someone to do it for me.

Communication is vital in any business, especially so in mine as it’s based around soft skills. I considered Microsoft Exchange as a communication portal, but reading up about it began to put me off.

Servers are expensive. They are expensive to buy, to configure and maintain. Not only that, but the software is also expensive, licensing is a bane I wanted nothing to do with, but knew I would probably have to if I wanted to be a success.

To make an Exchange system work, I needed an Exchange server, and two active directory servers, a network with a router and firewall, decent anti-virus and a host of other expenses. For the purchase costs and licenses I was looking at almost $10,000, and that didn’t even include training or running costs.

I knew I could afford that, certainly not in the beginning, so I continued my research. A few days later I happened across an advert promoting hosted services. I had no idea what that meant, but I’m the curious type so I explored further.

It was here that I was introduced to hosted services. These are where a large vendor like Archive Compliance builds an infrastructure that can support thousands of users. They then break it up into bite-sized chunks for new or small businesses just like mine and ‘rented’ it out. This was just what I had been looking for!

I contacted them to learn more and found that they allocated mailboxes and everything you would expect from your own Exchange server, but you didn’t have to host it. It was accessed by a web application and the users would never know the difference. All I had to pay for was a monthly fee for each user who I wanted to access the system.

Well this was ideal, I paid for what I needed and no more. I had no startup costs, didn’t need training or extra staff and could have the full functionality of the Exchange system without any of the hassle or responsibility. The enterprise level systems they run had much more fault tolerance than I could ever have afforded as well as better network protection.

The clincher for me though was that they took care of all my compliance obligations. They would store and archive my mails and electronic documents and would retrieve them for me if I received an e-discovery request for any reason.

Starting in business is expensive, but thinking through or around problems is the way to ensure they are kept to a minimum. I was able to save thousands of dollars by having my email hosted and haven’t looked back since.

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Posted in Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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Setting up Outlook to Connect to Exchange

September 16th, 2009

microsoft_exchange_server_2010

Exchange servers are used by companies all over the world to pass messages both internally and externally. Email is now the primary method of communication in business. We send hundreds of millions of emails every day, and the vast majority of them are sent and received by Microsoft Exchange Server.

Exchange is a platform that sits on a server and co-ordinates email clients throughout an organization. It accepts emails from users, translates them into binary, packages them up and sends them to the recipient. The receiving Exchange server will unwrap the email, build it again and forward it on to the recipient. As well as email, there are also calendar and contact functions as well as Outlook web access and mobile features that allow email to be sent to laptops, cell phones and PDA’s.

Users new to Exchange may find themselves in a position of trying to configure Outlook to connect to the server. In most organizations, this will be done for you, but there are some that will leave it up to you to figure out.

That’s where we come in, this article will describe how to connect your client to an Exchange server in no time at all so you can get on with emailing in the shortest time. The process is pretty straightforward, as Outlook is often installed by default on any machine with Office. If your machine doesn’t have Office either, Outlook Express may be there.

So, click Start then Control Panel then Mail. See? Easy so far. Select Email Accounts and then Add New Email Account and then Next. Choose the Microsoft Exchange Server then hit Next.

Here you have some options for which you need information. You will need the address of the Exchange server. If this hasn’t been provided for you, ask a colleague and copy their settings. Depending on how things are set up this may be enough to get you going.

You need to input the Exchange Server address, this is often something like “mail.company.com”, but can in fact be anything. You will also need to input your username and password, which the administrator will need to provide you. It may be different than your system login, but give it a try if you don’t have the details.

Once you have input the information, the application should do a quick check to ensure the details are correct then return it’s version of your email address. Once this happens click Finish.

Outlook should now chug away a bit and start downloading your emails and email settings. It will also install any corporate signatures, calendar events, contact books and rules. Depending on the organization, this could take a little while, but can be done in the background.

That is all there is to it. IT support may make a big deal out of setting you up with the connection, but once your account has been created in Exchange, the rest is easy.

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Posted in Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange

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Test Post

September 14th, 2009

Test posting

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Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange Hosting

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