polarismail exchange

[digp]

wonder how they are getting on with introducing exchange.

[George_B]

Originally Posted by digp

wonder how they are getting on with introducing exchange.

We are expecting to introduce it by mid-December or January. I will keep EMD updated.

[digp]

cool.... any idea of pricing?

[George_B]

sorry, can't divulge that right now.

but it will be lower than pretty much everyone else. It will include 25GB of storage, Barracuda + in-house Spam/Virus protection, ActiveSync, etc The only thing optional ( extra $ ) will be BES.

[digp]

if you need a 'tester', please let me know by PM.

i want to move my email to exchange (with another provider at the moment) but wish to move.

[digp]

Originally Posted by George_B

+ in-house Spam/Virus protection.

what ever you do please don't rely only on one AV and especially clam AV. it is a false economy.

[beq]

Originally Posted by George_B

but it will be lower than pretty much everyone else. It will include 25GB of storage, Barracuda + in-house Spam/Virus protection, ActiveSync, etc The only thing optional ( extra $ ) will be BES.

Sounds very interesting. Can you tell us whether it'll be 2007 or 2010?

Since last year's competitive price cut, Microsoft's own BPOS hosted platform (also available through resellers) is certainly compelling. But their Exchange Online still hasn't been upgraded to the 2010 version (outside of the dedicated and education markets), even though the 2010 on-premise suite was already released last year. And their service is not exactly infallible.

Of the independent hosted Exchange providers such as Apptix, Intermedia, Rackspace, *******, etc, some have already transitioned to 2010 on their own. But while some have adopted the larger storage capacity norm, many seem reluctant to follow the downward trend in pricing. ******* for example moved from offering a 3GB Exchange 2007 account with the basic trimmings included (such as ActiveSync and Outlook license) to a 25GB Exchange 2010 account where these trimmings cost extra. And yet others start at an even higher price point...

Reference

[digp]

yes i had planned to ask the same question about polarismail also.

[George_B]

It is 2010 that we will be offering.

Microsoft's BPOS offering is indeed very competitive but we see it as mainly a marketing stunt aimed to compete on price with Google Apps. That is the 50$/user/year offering which does not include support.

For a fully featured solution that includes Office Apps & Support, Microsoft will be charging 24$/user/month.

[digp]

look forward to that

beq thanks for reference to apptix

will sign up with them for now & review polarismail in due course

note apptix pricing is more reasonable & they use anti spam etc from message labs

[digp]

Polarismail should consider using messagelabs instead of barracuda.

[George_B]

Originally Posted by digp

Polarismail should consider using messagelabs instead of barracuda.

have you seen performance problems on barracuda protected mailboxes ?

We have had excellent results, especially when combined with our in-house solution, supports Active Directory sync and much more.

[digp]

Have you done an analysis of baracuda v messagelabs?

[George_B]

Sure. We find that on similar performance levels, Barracuda has a much lower cost to operate than MessageLabs.

However, for clients that prefer a third party solution such as Postini or MessageLabs we always work with them to implement that on a case by case basis. For example, we currently have many clients for which we run Postini since they prefer that for legacy reasons.

Cheers.

[digp]

What do you mean by 'similar'?