Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Windows Hosting : Anyone Doing Hosted Exchange?

[Ultima VPS]

As DNP have just released their new HE integration we are interested to find out what the demand is like for HE.

Can you also let me know what the average setup costs and any links to white label solutions?

Cheers,

Mark

[sam_cogan]

We have a number of clients offering hosted Exchange. Your costs really depend on what level of solution you want to provide. In theory you can offer hosted exchange using 1 server with exchange and AD installed and a control panel like DNP installed. However, its not a great Idea, you've got no redundancy either in exchange or active directory, so you might want to think of adding a separate server as a domain controller, or maybe two for redundancy, and another exchange server for the same, or a cluster, or a Back-end-front-end exchange setup for better access speed, or with Exchange 2007 separate servers for separate roles.

There’s a wide range of setups available to you and it all depends on what service you want to offer your customers. Remember that Exchange is a business critical app. Whilst customers will complain if there mail is offline, imagine what would happen if there mail, calendaring, tasks, inter-org communication is down? This is what would happen if your exchange system isn't up to scratch.

[exchangemymail]

I am going to have to agree with Sam_Cogan

Hosted Exchange customers are very demanding, and with good reason. It can be setup with the minimal hardware / software as described, but it is HIGHLY recommended not to go that route.

It's also a pretty competitive area right now, so advertising for those customers is going to be expensive. But if you have the budget for it.. it can be done.

Your not going to want to have an Exchange server connected through the internet. make sure you have good firewalls, and intrusion detection / prevention.

Good luck..

[01globalnet]

I remember a post from the director of EuroVPS 1 or 2 months ago - they have spent more than $500K for their infrastructure to provide enterprise HE, so you get an idea

[sam_cogan]

You dont have to spend 500k, you can get a nice, redundent system for much less than that, but if your planning on hosting hundreds of accounts with other service like sharepoint, live comms server etc, the price keeps mounting. One of the nice, and bad things about exchange is you can build up your infrastructure as much as you want.

[exchangemymail]

We also have close to $500K invested in our Exchange 2003 infrastructure. We are now in the second phase of planning our Exchange 2007 launch, and we are looking at about another $200K in equiptment, colo space, setup and config costs etc..

True you don't have to go that route.. but look at what some of the larger guys out there are doing. There is good reason for it..

[sam_cogan]

Oh I'd agree that if you've got 500k to spend on a HE setup you can get a fantastic system, but this doesn't mean the little guys cant do it, its scalable which is the great thing about it.