Email today is a very important part of daily life and activities for business and personal communications. Its so integrated into our daily lives that we hardly notice our dependency on this relatively newfound technology. Much of our information is stored and maintained within our email applications and so this is not something to take lightly from an IT perspective. Having secure and consistent email is a must for businesses that need to thrive in this electronic age, and also a must for many people’s personal communication needs.
One of the choices that we can make with email is our address. Are we sending mail from a generic host provider such as Yahoo or Gmail? Do we own our own domain? These are very important choices as they stay with us for quite some time. Once everyone has your email address that is at least as concrete as a physical address. Its how you are contacted. If the choice is to have your own domain name then by far hosting your own email on premise is the absolute best and most secure way to go.
At the top of the list of choices for on premise mail servers, Microsoft Exchange server beats them all by far. Its been the forerunner for many years, and although rather expensive to run the absolute best still after all these years. Active sync and synchronization with all devices of all important required services such as email, calendar, tasks, and notes makes Exchange Server a winner every time. It is further complete with the addition of a VoIP system to integrate phone messaging into this platform as well. Once deployed correctly and carefully it truly runs itself for many years stably. There is minor maintenance that needs dong and of course a good backup strategy, but for the most part its very easy to manage and stable almost all the time. Its a wonderful way to keep your information organized, PRIVATE and secured while having multiple easy ways to access it locally or remotely on the fly.
Here are the main Benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server:
- Protect your sensitive data and inform users of internal compliance policies with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities: Keep your organization safe from users mistakenly sending sensitive information to unauthorized people. The new Exchange DLP features identify, monitor, and protect sensitive data through deep content analysis. Exchange offers built-in DLP policies based on regulatory standards such as PII and PCI, and is extensible to support other policies important to your business. Additionally, the new Policy Tips in Outlook inform users about policy violations before sensitive data is sent.
- Allow compliance officers to run In-Place eDiscovery across Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype – from a single interface: The ability to immutably retain and discover data across your organization is essential to ensuring internal and regulatory compliance. Allow your compliance officers to autonomously use the eDiscovery Center to identify, hold, and analyze your organization’s data from Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype. And, the data always remains in-place, so you never have to manage a separate store of data. With the eDiscovery Center, you can reduce the cost of managing complex compliance needs, while ensuring you are prepared for the unexpected.
- Keep all of your important data in one place with Exchange archiving, large mailboxes, and retention policies: Empower your users with an in-place archive and large mailbox to allow them the flexibility to retain email in their primary mailbox, or to archive items. With flexible and powerful retention policies, you can take control of your storage and compliance demands – while keeping your users productive.
- Enable your users to collaborate on projects, get up to speed quickly on teams they join, and share information easily: Make it easier for your users to manage team and project communications. Allow users to see old communications on a project as soon as they join, have access to the current versions of their team documents, and access that information right from within Outlook. Your users will have powerful new tools to be productive on their teams and you will be able to manage information in the locations that this information was meant to be stored. Co-authoring, document storage and versioning is provided by SharePoint while messaging is handled by Exchange with a complete user experience within Outlook.
- Eliminate email threats before they reach your network: Exchange actively protects your communications with built-in defenses against email threats. Multi-layered anti-spam filtering comes with continuous updates to help guard against increasingly sophisticated spam and phishing threats, while multiple anti-malware engines work to protect your email data from viruses.
- Give your users an intuitive, touch-enabled inbox experience on just about any device: Enable your users to get more done from anywhere with an inbox that provides a clean and uncluttered experience, where the relevant and important information is optimized for different form-factors. The same thoughtful design in the Outlook desktop interface has been applied to both the browser and mobile interfaces.
- Decrease the amount of time spent managing your messaging systems while maintaining control: Manage powerful capabilities including DLP, Apps for Outlook, and site mailboxes from the Exchange Administration Center – a single, easy-to-use, web-based administration interface. Role-based access control empowers your helpdesk and specialist users to perform specific tasks which are surfaced appropriately in the Exchange Administration Center – without requiring full administrative permissions. This streamlined and intuitive experience helps you manage Exchange efficiently, delegate tasks, and focus on driving your business forward.
- Customize Exchange by integrating relevant, web-based Apps for Office into Outlook and Outlook Web App: Help your users spend less time switching between apps and make their communications experience more powerful with an extension model that allows you to provide easy plugin access across both the rich client and web-based Outlook experiences. You can minimize complexity with single sign-on to multiple applications and securely give access designed to ensure only authorized individuals can use each approved application.
- Bring all of your contacts together in one place: People’s professional networks span many different places. You will have the ability to enable users to bring their contacts in from other networks so that they have all of their information in one place. Exchange will even find the same person across networks and consolidate their information into one contact card, avoiding duplication and multiple contact cards with different information.
Fullyrealized LLC is very crafty at Exchange Server deployments. We plan it very carefully and don’t miss a beat. It’s a great technology. Its a great service to have. Its wonderful so long as important steps are taken from day one to cover important checklists. If all criteria is met soundly, a business can rely on the technology Exchange Server on premise deployments provide for years to come. Please ask us about this anytime. We are very enthusiastic about the real world business improvements we have witnessed first hand from a well deployed mailing system. Feel free to reach out and contact us about this service or any other we offer as well.