Mail server advice

[tim55]

I am assuming that some of you at small businesses may have come across the question of do you get a Windows SBS server and then use it's own Exchange to handle your mail, or do you get a standard Windows server and then use one of the ever increasing hosted Exchange services.

The issue seems to be that in case of the internet going down, or some sort of disaster strikes, a company can still keep functioning if it has access to email - staff with corporate Blackberrys for instance - which you could do with a hosted service. However, if you have your own mail server, you are stuffed.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.

 

[paulhthomas]

Hi Tim, my company specialises in small business solutions. It's a question Iget asked a lot and there's no definite answer to be honest. You can read many an article that sya that SBS and on site servers etc are dead in the water, but there are plenty of arguements against this.
For example, if your company maybe has an custom application that needs to run on a server, then you'll be paying for the hardware anyway and might aswell go down the SBS route and take full advntage of the technology it provides.
However, if you're a small business, and just need somewhere to store files and a fe email accounts, then cloud based solutions can definitely be of advantage; especially when you're about an about trying to get new business and you can get your email and documents on the go (SBS 2011 has made this a lot easier as well mind you).
I guess Im trying to say each case is different, and as a business, they need to sit down maybe with an IT Service Provider and weigh up the options, and what those options give them in terms of flexibility and cost.
That's my input anyway

Paul

Paul Thomas
Important IT

http://www.ImportantIT.com

 

[tim55]

Thanks for that Paul and of course you are right, every situation is different. But it is good to get other opinions and my thinking is probably along the same lines as yours. Tim

 

[bobsa32]

There are many pros and cons to on-site versus cloud.

My own personal take on this is that as long as comms remain as unreliable as they are then on-site will always be my preference.

in the UK at least, the main business comms line is ADSL/SDSL and with the reliability BT offers never mind their inability to fix issues, sites could be down for days.

I have just recently started using EFM lines for customers which seems an order of magnitude better, time will tell though.

 

[PaulGillespie]

You could also use a 3rd party like Own Web Now who filter your mail for viruses and spam then forward on your emails to your on-premise mailserver. Part of the service is that if you have issues effecting your on-premise server you can log into OWA that they provide and view all externally sent and received emails for the last year.

This seems to be a pretty good comprimise between on/off site email services.