IT Connection Newsletter: Issue 5

Exchange 2010 is designed to save you money on messaging infrastructure and services. Progent's email experts can show you how to deploy Exchange 2010 so you get a fast return on your IT investment.

Exchange 2010 is designed to save you money on messaging infrastructure and services so you get a fast return on your investment while benefiting from high availability, solid security, and advanced collaboration.

Exchange 2010 is loaded with powerful features such as Database Availability Groups for improved fault tolerance and faster recovery from disasters, Transport Protection Rules to help you safeguard sensitive data, automated archiving and retention for compliance with government and industry regulations, synchronization support for most smartphones including Windows Phones, BlackBerries, Androids, and iPhones, and a new unified communications architecture that manages not only email but voice mail, Voice over IP and video telephony, instant messaging, faxing, and presence awareness.

How Exchange Server 2010 Can Save You Money
Now that Microsoft has terminated support for Exchange 2003, it's a good time to evaluate the business case for moving to Exchange Server 2010. This new release of Exchange can lower storage costs by 70%, cut administrative overhead by 20-30%, and reduce voice mail expenses by 40-50%. On top of those cost savings, Exchange 2010 promotes better business results by delivering 99.99% availability and by offering a wealth of productivity-enhancing features such as shared calendars, speech-to-text voice mail previews, call screening, multi-mailbox search, automatic voice mail attendant, and self-service administration for end users.

Exchange's new Database Availability Groups (DAGs) support fault-tolerant clustering and continuous backup. A DAG is a set of mailbox servers that can automatically replicate databases, recover quickly from various server and storage breakdowns, and allow IT managers to move mailboxes to different servers without disrupting Exchange operation.

Exchange 2010 allows you to implement a redundant server configuration with only two servers. In comparison, Exchange 2007 requires four severs for full redundancy. Exchange 2010 also has built-in support for site failover between geographically separated datacenters.

Exchange 2010 has added support for consumer-class Serial ATA (SATA) disk drives, which are included in most personal computers shipping today. By supporting storage area networks, direct attached SAS drives, and ultra-affordable SATA disks, Exchange 2010 protects your IT investments while cutting the cost of expanding your storage capacity and simplifying administration by allowing larger inboxes.

Exchange 2010's enhanced support for voice mail makes it possible to replace outdated PBX equipment and voice mail services with Microsoft's software-driven alternative. This can save up to 40% off your PBX costs and improve productivity by making it easier to retrieve and manage your voice messages. Major new features include Speech-to-Text Preview, custom attendants to greet callers and help them navigate the system, and rule-based call response and routing based on Caller ID or other contact data. Exchange 2010 can also send text alerts telling users that new voice mail is available.

For a more detailed description of the new and enhanced capabilities of Exchange 2010, refer to Exchange 2010 Consulting.

How Progent Can Help with Exchange Server 2010
Progent's Microsoft-Certified Exchange experts can help you evaluate the costs, risks, and benefits of adopting Exchange 2010 and assist you to create and carry out an affordable plan for upgrading to Exchange 2010 from an earlier version of Exchange, from an ISP-hosted email solution, or from a hybrid multi-vendor email environment. Progent's email migration consultants can apply industry best practices to design and manage an upgrade that minimizes the disruption to your business, strengthens security, improves fault tolerance, increases performance and capacity, lowers the costs of buying equipment and running your data center, and enhances the business value of your information network.

Progent can show you how to configure Exchange 2010 and Active Directory to enforce your security policies, implement low-cost redundancy and failover clustering for non-stop operation, create a disaster recovery plan that utilizes the fast backup and restore capabilities of Exchange 2010, and integrate remote desktops, mobile computers, and smartphones to ensure that your off-site workforce can benefit from Exchange 2010's enhanced support for online access and mobility.

Contact Progent for Help with Exchange 2010
For information about Progent's consulting and support services for Exchange 2010, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

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