Hello everyone, I recently set up an office network for a small business. I'd just like to know if Micosoft Exchange Server is something I should recommend to this business. They're a small office with 20 employees. Not all their employees have an email account. (Only about 2-3 have one.) Currently, main emails (i.e. inquiries, official correspondance) are recieved and saved on the MD's PC using Outlook 2010. I chose the PC (and not the file server) since the PC has an SSD and this gives him faster access. The emails are daily backed up on to the file server. The other 1-2 email users also have a similar setup, only their emails are saved directly onto the server. Their server is essentially a simple file server running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit edition. Would Exchange Server be something they should look into? Their current PST file is about 30 GB. Can Exchange help with that? Will access times go down/up if Exchange Server was implemented? Appreciate the help.

Helllo If you required all the services in one server you can use Microsoft SBS server in which you can get Exchange server where you can manage the Mail accounts plus you will be having administration task. If you have only 3 or 4 account you can buy emails accounts from outside. http://myhosting.com/exchange/ Thanks MhussainThanks Mhussain

I would suggest looking at the cloud for email. Current offerenting from Microsoft is BPOS: http://www.microsoft.com/online/deploy.aspx The next version for Microsoft is Office 365: http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/online-services.aspx Small businesses will really benefit as they do not have to worry about backups, maitenance, SLAs, access, etc. Very simple, subscription based model.Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

Unfortunately, their internet speeds aren't fast enough for cloud computing. (A 512 kbps line) And they're not looking to upgrade for their network especially since they just invested in a "fancy" new server. I've added other "bells and whistles" to their server, like DHCP, WDS, WSUS, Win Serv Backup. But again, will Exchange server help? I'm not very familiar with it and their website is too detailed. Can anyone dumb it down for me (and the business owner)?

Hi, Buying Exchange for just 2-3 users seems a bit overkill. I know that you kind of dismissed the idea of BPOS because of the internet line, but it doesn't change much compared to what you have now. In BPOS you will be able to run Outlook in cached mode and then you will just download the message to Outlook and then you are using the local copy so additional bandwidth required here. What you do get with BPOS is the backup and SLA from Microsoft, so that might be a thing to advice the business owner about. /MartinExchange is a passion not just a collaboration software.