Is it better to choose a local hosted Exchange provider?
The concept of a hosted Exchange or SharePoint offering is not revolutionary, so why is it that businesses think that cloud services such as Office 365 are new?
Hosted Exchange has actually been around for over 10 years, however in recent times this has become more and more prevalent as organisations look to remove baseline operational systems such as email. In fact Microsoft’s first hosted Exchange customer was the battery company Energizer, originally part of a pilot offering to large organisations back in 2005.
Microsoft’s 2010 suite of products for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync even come with hosting packs and multi-tenant support allowing anyone to offer their own SaaS solution similar to Office 365.
In a recent post I spoke about the important of finding a reputable cloud provider that isn’t run from a garage. In realistic terms it would not take a great deal of time or financial investment to build and host your own Office 365-like SaaS offering. In fact there are many providers out there already hosting Exchange and SharePoint services, and not necessarily from a garage.
At the Paradyne office we actually run multiple Exchange, SharePoint and Lync environments which are accessible remotely – however these are for testing purposes (sometimes for customers) and as such we are happy to run them in an environment that is not necessarily business-grade. This doesn’t necessarily mean that hosting providers are doing the same, but it’s safe to say it’s certainly not at the same level as Office 365.
Let’s take a look at some of differences between hosted Exchange/SharePoint/Lync services and Office 365.
Sales and service
Not only does Microsoft have significant sales presence in each country with specialists in Office 365, it also has access to a worldwide network of partners who also specialise in Office 365 and can answer any question you may have.
Economies of scale
Office 365 supports thousands of businesses and millions of users. When Microsoft purchases additional hardware it is in a volume that cannot be fathomed by most people. Because of this the prices Microsoft pays for hardware is completely different to what a smaller hosting provider would pay. An example of this is the upcoming doubling of mailbox storage space for Office 365 Kiosk users, which Microsoft says was just because it became cheaper to provide it.
Product updates
When an update is released to the public it needs to be tested by the hosting provider for some time before being rolled out to the customer hosting environment. Because Microsoft is developing the update as well as hosting the service it makes sense that they can be testing it before it is released, ensuring a quicker rollout to production systems and ultimately into the hands of customers.
Redundancy
Medium hosting providers may have redundant systems within the same data centre (smaller ones generally don’t at all), large ones may have redundant systems in another state – but how many have redundant hosting environments in other countries, like Office 365?
Licence pricing
When Microsoft licenses its own software to customers through solutions such as Office 365 it doesn’t need to purchase the licences through a distributor – something every Microsoft partner in the world has to do. Cutting out the margin added by a distributor means that the internal allocation of licence costs within Microsoft is at a lower rate.
Support
You may choose your hosting provider because they are local, speak with the same accent, or because you can raise your account manager on a mobile phone. While that is definitely beneficial, what happens when that person is on leave or unavailable? What happens if a contagious illness (eg. the common cold) sweeps through the hosting provider’s offices? Microsoft has global support teams available 24×7. Sure, hold times may be longer at certain times for various reasons, but at least there is someone somewhere in the world to answer the phone.
Even the best of engineers at hosting providers will from time to time need to escalate an issue to Microsoft, adding unnecessary delays. With Office 365, Microsoft wrote the software so their teams are best placed to support their own product.
There’s many reasons why you might choose a hosting provider to provide you with Exchange/SharePoint/Lync functionality but no matter how great or sizeable they are, it pales in comparison to Microsoft and Office 365.
Loryan Strant is a Microsoft Office 365 MVP (Most Valuable Professional). Follow him on Twitter @TheCloudMouth.
