Exchange Online is licensed as a User Subscription License (USL). There are two Exchange Online Plans, Plan 1 and Plan 2. Plan 2 includes more advanced features than Plan 1 (for details, please see below). As part of an Office 365 plan, Exchange Online Plan 1 is included in Office 365 Business Essentials, Business Premium and Enterprise E1.
Includes Exchange Online, which is a that provides organizations with access to the full-featured version of. It includes access to email, calendars, contacts and tasks for any endpoint device. Let’s look at in more detail and weigh its most important considerations.Exchange Online features and benefitsThe most noteworthy feature of Exchange Online is its hosted nature; services are accessed across the (WAN), so there are no Exchange Server software packages to deploy and configure. Also, physical servers are not required for support. This dramatically reduces the capital expense and ongoing support for email services.There’s also considerable versatility for endpoints and email clients. For example, Exchange Online supports remote access for user devices including desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets and Apple systems. Mobile devices like, Androids, BlackBerry devices, and Windows Phone are also included.
Exchange Online email is accessed through conventionally installed and Outlook 2007 clients. (OWA) also supports email as well as complete calendar and contact activity from any Web-connected device. More on hosted Exchange and Office 365Exchange Online provides an ample 25 GB storage for each registered user’s mailbox. Users can send messages up to 25 MB, which is important when sending rich-media file attachments like.pdfs or image files.There’s also an archiving feature that supports retention and compliance rules for corporate environments - though it’s not without its drawbacks. “It’s not a perfect archive because it’s not available offline,” said Sean Evans, Exchange lead at Blue Chip Consulting. “So unless you’re connected via, you can’t get to the archive.”Another noted benefit of hosted Exchange is the addition of security tools. (FOPE) is deployed on the service provider’s end to curtail spam and viruses.
This adds value over conventional Exchange Server deployments where security and malware tools must be purchased, installed and maintained separately.Exchange Online enterprise pricing and controlThere are two principal pricing schemes for Exchange Online. One plan carries a monthly fee of $5 per user, while the other plan costs $10 per user. Both plans provide the overall suite of features covered above, but the $10 plan provides advanced archiving, and compliance features, as well as unlimited and hosted voicemail. Additional pricing plans and options are available for organizations that want other Office 365 hosted capabilities, like SharePoint Online and Lync Online.Organizations should weigh the recurring monthly per-user plan costs against the cost of owning and operating Exchange servers in-house.
For example, an organization with 1,000 users at $10 per month would be looking at a $10,000 per month recurring bill.But the costs of Exchange Server and dedicated Exchange administration can be eliminated. Similarly, large enterprises may already own a site license for, and the introduction of hosted email services may undercut the value of that site license without adequate cost analysis.Evans noted that organizations have very little - if any - direct control over a hosted, multi-tenant environment. Limited provisioning and management functions are available and message tracking is more decentralized. The goal is to simplify the messaging environment and alleviate many of the worries Exchange administrators routinely face.“Microsoft has taken best practices into the cloud and given you less to worry about,” Evans said.
Still, with hosted services, major email support comes from outside the business. This loss of control may be a point of consternation for organizations with exacting compliance standards as well as security and archiving needs.Exchange Online reliabilityThe adoption of hosted services like email has been hampered by concerns over service reliability and availability. If Exchange Online goes down, the business has no direct control over downtime or service restoration.
Microsoft promises a 99.9% uptime commitment for Exchange Online. This should be suitable to many enterprise deployments, and there is a proliferation of in major regional service areas to ensure redundancy.Microsoft ensures user email protection by hosting data in geographically-distributed data centers with continuous data backup and disaster recovery capabilities. (DAG) features are employed to keep data intact; users won’t even know that they’ve been redirected to a different site.There have been both in the past and it’s apparent that Microsoft is not alone in dealing with hosted service outages. Communicating the problem to customers and addressing issues decisively will be critical to the success of hosted services. I have a client who uses the email service that comes with hosting, but he needs something more than that: Central management of users; backup/archiving; and (more importantly) use of business intelligence tools that will allow searching of email database for information (they need to analyze data in their emails). An option is to set up an Exchange server in-house and divert email hosting to from the webserver, but this would need an in-house person to manage it. What is the alternative?
Exchange Online Plan 2 Vs E3
Any hosted, managed service that will meet the said requirements? I'm unable to find something suitable so far. Thanks in advance. Add My Comment.