Monday, June 18, 2007

Hosted Exchange - Smart Phones - Working From Home

Hosted Exchange may be one of my favorite technical developments in the last few years. I was certified as a Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator in 1999. I was an avid user of the product for a while, but if the domain was large enough it could be a full time job just to administer the server. Two years ago I started looking at the early adopters of Hosted Exchange solutions. Both Asp One and 123 Together were ahead of the curve.

Hosted Exchange means getting all the value of Microsoft's product without any of the admin headaches. Some of the features include Outlook Web Access, shared calendars, shared contact lists, backups, Blackberry support and more!

During my recent quest to become even more tied to my company, I decided it was time to use a hosted exchange solution myself. I went with Hostway's solution. They recently purchased a local company that I was very familiar with (Affinity Internet). My plan is $10/month for 500 megs of storage and one mailbox. The icing on the cake came when I found out that since my Motorola Q Phone uses Windows ME and Active Sync, the is no addition fee for mobile access. Now I can be offshore catching sailfish and actively managing my email and PPC accounts right from my phone!

If you are interested in learning more about Hosted Exchange Solutions, please contact me. I have been in charge of several large implementations that worked out flawlessly.

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