Jul
24
2009

Why your Business Email needs a Top Notch Data Center

by Sumeet Sabharwal

For most businesses operating in a web enabled marketplace, e-mail has replaced the phone system as the communications nerve center. If you don’t think so, imagine which one you could do without for a day. As one of a business’ most valuable and important resources, it presents some challenges when it comes to how and where to manage it. Commercial e-mail like Gmail or AOL isn’t an option for anyone that wants to be taken seriously, and unless you already have significant bandwidth, hardware, and 24-7 staffing, running it in house isn’t really an option.

The decision to outsource e-mail may be an easy one, but the implementation is much less cut and dry. Shared hosting versus dedicated, basic POP mail service versus full featured Exchange hosting, there are solutions to fit organizations and budgets of any size. Regardless of the solution you’re considering for your business, there’s a common question you should be asking- what kind of data center will my mail be hosted in?

In a very tangible sense, the data center is a tremendous portion of the overall value of a mail service, and yet, it is frequently the least considered one, lost is a sea of price points and feature sets. Often it’s the quality of the data center that makes the difference between poor and excellent e-mail service.
more

Jul
20
2009

Why Choose NaviSite – Hosted Exchange Services

by William Toll

It’s a sign of the 21st century business environment that for many SMBs, e-mail has replaced the phone system as the centerpiece of day to day communications. With the increase in telecommuting and a marketplace that has gone global, access to e-mail and other important information is critical, and as a result many companies have moved to a centralized e-mail solution like managed, hosted Exchange Server. Rock solid integration with other Microsoft Office applications, automated backup and security features, and support for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Palm Pre devices make Exchange Server a great fit for businesses. By going with a NaviSite Hosted Exchange solution, SMBs add significant value by leveraging enterprise class infrastructure, unbeatable support, and much more.

The NaviSite Hosted Exchange service is build on a foundation of industry best, brand name technology, datacenters built with N + 1 redundancy, and high speed network connectivity to multiple backbone providers. That commitment to exceptional performance and 100% uptime availability is reinforced by award winning Always There™ support. Highly trained, certified technicians are on site, ready to help, 24/7/365, which means when you have to call in the middle of the night, there’s a live person on the other end.
more

Jul
16
2009

Hosted Exchange and BlackBerry- Enterprise Communications for SMBs

by Sumeet Sabharwal

The iPhone may be the center of attention at the smart phone party right now, but when it’s time to get down to business, the leader remains the BlackBerry. Even the top executive in the country famously has his own souped up model. The BlackBerry has become ubiquitous in companies all over America, and it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that business would halt if people’s Blackberries stopped working (the proof being a notorious outage of a couple years ago).

With the entrenchment of the BlackBerry in the business world, it’s surprising how few SMBs have fully integrated it with their larger business communications solution. To put it another way, if your employees use Blackberries and you aren’t using hosted BlackBerry services along with Microsoft Exchange Server with Active Sync, you’re missing out on some big advantages.

The BlackBerry rose to dominate the business world primarily based on one killer app: it was and still is an easy to use e-mail appliance that fits in your pocket. It’s funny and not a little surprising then that millions of business people use this handy little e-mail machine to access an e-mail system that it’s totally separate and disconnected from their corporate mail. They go through a complicated daily process of forwarding mail from desktop to hand held and back again, with multiple copies of documents in multiple places and creating a management headache that magnifies geometrically with any serious volume of mail to deal with. The solution to this is by using Exchange and Active Sync in conjunction with hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
more

Jul
15
2009

Save CAPEX with Outsourcing Hosted Exchange

by William Toll

When it comes to business communications, there are good reasons why Microsoft Exchange Server has succeeded where many other platforms have fallen short. Tight integration with other MS Office applications, administrator friendly tools for automated backups and security functions, and with support for iPhone, Blackberry, and browser based access to e-mail and other key information, Exchange server is the communications backbone for SMBs of all sizes, from a small team to organizations with hundreds or even thousands of employees.

Choosing Exchange can be an easy decision, but the one that follows may not be-should you manage it in house, or outsource to a managed application host? For more and more businesses, outsourcing makes sense. Application hosting has come a long way in the last ten years. Once an afterthought for service providers, managed application hosting today is not only a vital revenue provider for hosts, it can also play a key role in any business plan.

Consider just the capital expense in deploying Exchange server in the business place. There are obvious costs like server hardware and software licenses. There are also secondary costs like personnel, training, and even additional bandwidth. Unless your business is in a position to leverage existing skill sets and infrastructure, chances are this will become a cost prohibitive effort.
more

Jul
6
2009

ActiveSync support makes the Palm Pre attractive to SMBs

by William Toll

Just a few weeks into its release, the Palm Pre has already established itself as a strong alternative to the industry leading Blackberry and iPhone devices. Staking the claim on the middle ground between its competitors, the Palm has taken a best of both worlds approach, with a touch screen interface and a slide out hardware keyboard. Hidden under crowd pleasing features like multitasking, GPS, and video camera is a secret business weapon- built in ActiveSync support.

Apple resisted ActiveSync support until version 2.0 of the iPhone OS, and it cost them in the business place. Palm hasn’t repeated that mistake, and has made sure that the Pre can easily integrate with Exchange for fast adoption in the enterprise. Users don’t just have interactive on the go access to e-mail, contacts, and calendar information; they also have powerful search and organization tools that only a centralized mail solution can deliver.

As useful as ActiveSync with managed Hosted Exchange is for end users, it’s even more popular with IT professionals. Administration is easy and efficient, backups are automatic, and spam protection and security is rock solid with Exchange. Hosted Exchange is a cost effective solution for centralized communications, and the upcoming Exchange 2010 promises to add even more value with features like unified voice and e-mail boxes.
more

Jul
1
2009

Entourage 2008 and Exchange- The Solution for Designers

by Sumeet Sabharwal

In the business world, design and media firms occupy a unique space. They are the quirky, creative cousin of the corporate worker, a necessary piece of the commerce puzzle but frequently the t-shirt wearing free spirit in a room full of suits and ties. Nowhere is this more evident than is the choice of computers. Setting aside the Mac versus PC argument, the fact remains that Apple computers dominate the media world for a good reason- they do those jobs very well. The flip side to that equation is the Apple platform hasn’t been historically as well supported when it comes to business applications. IT administrators for design houses have been forced to choose between running substandard ports of native PC applications and maintaining a dual operating system environment. When it comes to centralized business communications, there’s a better option- Entourage 2008 and Hosted Exchange.

Fully integrated with the other Office applications, Entourage 2008 gives users powerful e-mail, task and calendar management, and in conjunction with Exchange server allows users anywhere, anytime access to critical information. With built in sync support for Address Book, iCal, and .MAC services, and ActiveSync capabilities through Exchange to push data to iPhone, Palm Pre, and Blackberry devices, Entourage 2008 lives up to the promise of business ready powerful communications in a native Mac OS environment. Entourage 2008 is a Universal Binary application, able to run on both PowerPC and x86 processors.
more

Jun
24
2009

How Email Synchronization Can Save Time and Money

by William Toll

There are few things as aggravating as having to do the same job twice, and yet when it comes to managing our business lives, many people have to do this constantly. Here’s a common example- a salesperson books an appointment with a client. She adds the appointment to her desktop calendar. Then she also adds the appointment to her cell phone or PDA. Then she adds the appointment to the team calendar, which is printed and posted in the office so co-workers can keep track of each other. Finally, she adds it to the lead tracking sheet, call log, and activity log, and is looking forward to actually selling something instead of documenting it before the fact.

Then the client has to move the appointment out by an hour.

Our poor overworked salesperson has to re-do all those listings, and hopefully doesn’t forget one in the process. Many meetings have been missed because the rescheduling notification flow broke down before reaching all the participants. How much better would it be to make a single calendar entry and have everything else update automatically? Fortunately those capabilities exist today, through hosted Microsoft Exchange.

Using ActiveSync and Direct Push technology, your hosted Exchange Server can synchronize calendar information across a variety of devices- smart phones, handhelds and palmtops, as well as laptop and desktop PCs. Updates are relayed to everyone, whether they are at their desks or out in the field, and the days of missing the meeting because of crossed signals are over.
more

Jun
18
2009

Is Gmail good for your business?

by Sumeet Sabharwal

When the history of early 21st century business is written, Google will certainly be counted among the success stories, and big component of their success has been the wide adoption of Gmail. Although not the first to offer a free e-mail service, Google’s mail service has been very popular thanks to a minimalist approach- slim on features, but easily accessed on a variety of web enabled devices. As a recent letter sent to Google CEO Eric Schmidt points out, one of the features they’ve scrimped on is security.

By default, Google Mail and Google Documents transmit information in clear text. This means that data is unencrypted, and easily read by anyone who is able to intercept it. The reason this is disabled by default is understandable- tough encryption comes with a processing cost. The overhead for Google to encrypt all the mail that moves through their system would be massive. The problem for Google is that, due to their positioning, they are held to a higher standard. It would likely come as a big surprise to the millions of businesspeople who rely on Gmail that it comes with a massive security risk.
more

Jun
16
2009

E-mail Retention and Archival- Why It’s Critical For Your Business

by William Toll

If your business is like most, e-mail has become the heart of your company communications. Sales teams depend on it to communicate with clients, management depends on it to communicate with employees, it’s vital for a successful modern business. What many people fail to consider is that e-mail is also a dangerous chink in your corporate armor, and in a decidedly unglamorous way. It’s a simple but critical question- where does your company e-mail go when your employees are done processing it?

It’s important to understand that company e-mail is the property of your company. There have been many good arguments made about privacy in the workplace and the rights of individuals but make no mistake- when it comes to the law your business is responsible and accountable for that information.

E-mail retention is difficult for a number of reasons, not the least of which is most e-mail is the equivalent of a gum wrapper once it’s been read, nothing but an afterthought. The sheer volume of e-mail presents another challenge, as is the fact that by and large e-mail defies easy categorization. Above all else is a truism that most of us have experienced- the e-mail you can’t find is the one you need.
more

Jun
11
2009

NaviSite attends Mass Innovation Nights!

by William Toll

NaviSite was honored to participate in the third gathering of a great new event in the Boston, Massachusetts area.. MassInnovationNights.com allows companies large and small to showcase their new products to an audience of social media enthusiasts, mass media and potential customers.

NaviSite SMB hosting was featuring its recently launched Business Email service powered by Microsoft Exchange. With NaviSite’s Exchange hosting service, businesses of any size have access to corporate class email services like: shared calendars, BlackBerry synchronization, Free software including Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008 for PC and MAC.
more

• view all

2008 2009 2010

January 2010
February 2010
March 2010