Is google apps a viable replacement for exchange?

Chillimonster · 16 Aug 2010 at 13:58

At work we have an old server (P4 1.8 with 2gb ram) running SBS2003 with Exchange, serving 5 users and documents.

The documents are in the process of being transferred over to NAS drives (with auto off-site backups every night), but the emails need to be sorted.

Like i said they are currently sorted by Exchange on a POP connection and there are 5 users on there, but one of the reasons for the questions is that we need to put an additional 5-8 users on there and the old girl will not take it

The emails are filed under public folders, with all users having access to them, and each user also having there own @company email address that they use for individual emails.

The MD is keen to use an off site solution and Google Apps seems an obvious choice. Can google apps replicate this functionality with all emails being able to be tagged with clients names, with all users having access to them as well as their own company email address?

Thanks

Chris

HungryHippos · 16 Aug 2010 at 14:30

Have you looked at Hosted Exchange solutions?

I work for Cobweb (http://www.cobweb.com/) and we definitely do what you want on a Hosted Exchange 2007 platform for a few £ p/m per mailbox

Chillimonster · 16 Aug 2010 at 14:46

Eulogy said:
Have you looked at Hosted Exchange solutions?

I work for Cobweb (http://www.cobweb.com/) and we definitely do what you want on a Hosted Exchange 2007 platform for a few £ p/m per mailbox

Thanks - Will look at that later.

feenster99 · 16 Aug 2010 at 18:26

Google Apps cannot provide a replacement for Exchange Public Folders unfortunately. You could purchase additional licenses for each folder and set that up as an email address with Google. You can then delegate access to these accounts to all users.

In Outlook or through the webmail, each would appear as a seperate account they have access to and so can access the inbox/sent items etc.

If you have any further queries, give me a shout - I've done quite a few Google Apps installs for customers now so know most of the ins and outs.

Matt

Yamahahahahaha · 16 Aug 2010 at 19:22

Nothing is as good as Public Folders for doing what you do. It's an ongoing saga with pretty much all of our clients who use them.

Hosted Exchange sounds like what you want / need, assuming you're not pushing large emails around (. < 5MB).
It makes a lot of sense, rather than shelling out for a big new server.

Chillimonster · 16 Aug 2010 at 20:38

All small emails, but quite a few of them.

at the moment we have all the emails coming into the server, then any addressed to the 'service@' account go to the public folder which are then actioned by one of the team and then filed within the subfolders of 'service'

The ones addressed to the team (EG 'tom' 'richard' ' harry' etc ) all get routed to the relevant users who have access to the service folder as well.

HungryHippos · 17 Aug 2010 at 00:04

Yamahahahahaha said:
Nothing is as good as Public Folders for doing what you do. It's an ongoing saga with pretty much all of our clients who use them.

Hosted Exchange sounds like what you want / need, assuming you're not pushing large emails around (. < 5MB).
It makes a lot of sense, rather than shelling out for a big new server.

Hosted Exchange is very cost effective for small-medium businesses for sure. These days i'd even argue it's getting more cost effective for the larger businesses too as the price per mailbox comes down to just a few £ per month per user.

You'd find it hard to provide an in house solution that includes all you get with a hosted exchange solution for the same kind of unit costs:

Server installation/maintenance costs
CAL Licensing
Anti Spam with Message Labs
Backup solution
Mailbox access via OWA/POP3/IMAP/MAPI/ActiveSync
All the standard features that come with Exchange and Outlook, calendar, mailbox sharing, public folders etc.

I do believe that in future we will see more shifts away from in-house solutions over to a hosted solution such as the one we have at Cobweb, however that's not to say that having an in-house solution is always a bad idea.

One thing the hosted model doesn't really cater for is customisation because they run on a shared platform model and those are subject to tighter regulations with regards to what can be changed.

Chillimonster · 17 Aug 2010 at 11:14

As the file serving has been taken care of, the email thing is still giving me a headache.

Google Apps - No public folder support (although labels allows multiple labels to be assigned..)

SBS 2008 - Unwieldy, needs new hardware, expensive

Hosted Exchange - Cost per user is reasonable, off site, secure

Exchange alternatives (Workgroup Mail / Icewarp etc) - Dont know much about these, but can be run from a seperate PC and backed up to the NAS for offsite backup.

Where's the headache tablets!

Yamahahahahaha · 18 Aug 2010 at 10:14

For a new server with Exchange 2010, Windows 2k8 R2 Enterprise edition (Needed for mailbox resiliancy, perhaps not necessary in your situation?), CALs for 15 users (Enterprise CALs to get the useful stuff like archive mailboxes), and all the other miscellanious bits, it's going to be 6 or 7 thousand at least.
Then it comes down to whether or not it's worth that much to your business.

As Eulogy has more spefically detailed, hosted Exchange 2010 offers a lot for a relatively low cost.

Chillimonster · 18 Aug 2010 at 11:21

Yamahahahahaha said:
For a new server with Exchange 2010, Windows 2k8 R2 Enterprise edition (Needed for mailbox resiliancy, perhaps not necessary in your situation?), CALs for 15 users (Enterprise CALs to get the useful stuff like archive mailboxes), and all the other miscellanious bits, it's going to be 6 or 7 thousand at least.
Then it comes down to whether or not it's worth that much to your business.

As Eulogy has more spefically detailed, hosted Exchange 2010 offers a lot for a relatively low cost.

Waiting for Cobweb to ring me back after i put an enquiry in yesterday.

Thanks for the input guys

HungryHippos · 18 Aug 2010 at 23:55

Chillimonster said:
Waiting for Cobweb to ring me back after i put an enquiry in yesterday.

Thanks for the input guys

Let me know if you got any other questions dude

Chillimonster · 19 Aug 2010 at 17:11

Had a chat With Darren a couple of days ago, and with Steve today.

Just waiting for the 'Commercials' to be sorted then its all systems go.

Pit that the Public Folders can not be migrated easily, but not a major problem - just dragged them all out of the folders and onto a backup drive - will put them back in IF we need to - will be good to start with a clean sheet.

HungryHippos · 19 Aug 2010 at 17:39

Chillimonster said:
Had a chat With Darren a couple of days ago, and with Steve today.

Just waiting for the 'Commercials' to be sorted then its all systems go.

Pit that the Public Folders can not be migrated easily, but not a major problem - just dragged them all out of the folders and onto a backup drive - will put them back in IF we need to - will be good to start with a clean sheet.

Yeah Public Folders are always a pain, mailbox data can easily be migrated with the import-mailbox switches in powershell but there isn't an equivalent for the folders really. Probably easiest method I find would be to create the folders you need using the Parallels panel, then just drag and drop the data from the PST into the relevant folders using Outlook.

All the permissions, mail enabling etc are controlled using the Parallels CP, so depending how many folders you have can be a bit of a pain. But we're looking to improve that particular functionality soon (I want to have it so that it works more like the old Exchange System Manager functionality, but also with the ability to set and remove ACL's using something like the PFDAVAdmin functionality).

I've worked for Cobweb for a few years now and would happily recommend our Exchange services to those in need such as yourself

Vince · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:27

Eulogy said:
Have you looked at Hosted Exchange solutions?

I work for Cobweb (http://www.cobweb.com/) and we definitely do what you want on a Hosted Exchange 2007 platform for a few £ p/m per mailbox

Hello... are you one of the guys I regularly shout at then?

Credit where its due though, some top guys over at cobweb.

HungryHippos · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:32

VinceB1 said:
Hello... are you one of the guys I regularly shout at then?

Credit where its due though, some top guys over at cobweb.

lol, no

I work in the technical department

Vince · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:37

Who was that guy, was it Carlton?... not sure, did you work with him? he was a good guy, not customer facing but certainly knew his stuff.

HungryHippos · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:42

You mean Charlton I think, professionally speaking he did indeed know his stuff, but him and I didn't exactly see eye-to-eye if you get me?

Vince · 23 Aug 2010 at 16:58

That was the guy, it was a few years ago now but I am with you, sometimes that just how business goes. Mind you if I remember rightly he (or cobweb generally) did make an absolute hash of exporting my sharepoint environment a few years back ready for migration. It worked out in the end but by all accounts I almost become the very first customer that you lost data for.

That wasn't a fun month but all came good in the end. From a customers point of view though you are not bad at all just lack flexibility on certain things because of the nature of the shared platform. From my experience, for any sme out there there really isn't anybody that is matching your pricing or support on hosted exchange. Which reminds me ill have to send mike an email and grab a beer next time he is in town.

HungryHippos · 23 Aug 2010 at 17:08

Webster? he's a legend! work with him on a lot of stuff, very knowledgable/approachable guy. Shame about the Sharepoint stuff but glad it came good in the end. Was it a WSS2 site? For some reason Microsoft make them really hard to export/import easily.

Our windows team tell me they almost always have to make customisations for each migration because if you follow one formula it will almost always fail!

Vince · 23 Aug 2010 at 17:13

We had both wss2 and wss3 running side by side, they are now located in a farm over at rackspace as what we wanted to do there was a bit more complex than you can accomodate (custom event handlers, FBA and alike).

Not webster no - Olphin, when he is in town we tend to meet up have a beer and I get to catch up with whats new at cobweb. Which is a nice touch tbh.