Benefits of Hosted ExchangeMicrosoft Exchange has proven to be the world's most popular business messaging platform, with an estimated 34% installed base market share; over 10% more than its nearest competitor (according to a 2005 study by The Radicati Group).
It boosts company productivity through advanced features like always-synced email, files, calendars and contacts; mobile access on devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Treo or Motorola Q; advanced Web-mail; shared calendars that let employees see colleagues' availability to schedule or rearrange meetings, book conference rooms and plan projects; shared task lists that allow 'to do' lists to be created and assigned, then shared with team members; and shared contacts which guarantee that customers' contact details will never be lost or misplaced.
Unfortunately, for most small and midsize businesses (SMBs), the cost of running an MS Exchange server 'in-house' is simply too much. Up-front costs can exceed $10,000—plus staff time to maintain the server. This is why hosted Exchange makes sense for smaller businesses.
Exchange server hosting means that a specialist IT company runs the technology and charges businesses a small monthly fee to use it. This allows them to enjoy the same enterprise-strength IT that Fortune 500 companies have, but at a price they can afford.