Is Microsoft Exchange The Right Answer For Your Firm?

As firms continue to change their technology to the latest Microsoft Server 2003, Windows SBS Server 2003, Novell
NetWare or Linux operating systems,
frequent questions asked are these:
Should I use Microsoft Exchange
2003? What are the alternatives?

Exchange is the Microsoft server
add-on that handles e-mail, shared
calendars, shared contacts and to-do
lists. The shared contacts and shared
calendar function is a convenient
place to store all general contact
information for your firm. The trick
with the shared contacts is keeping
them synchronized with other sources
of name, address and phone numbers
throughout your firm. Over time,
this will get better as vendors
like CCH, Thompson, Intuit and others
make the integration into their
systems tight and synchronized with
Exchange and Outlook. But for now,
the promise of integration is only
beginning to work. In the meantime,
what are the benefits of integration
that come from implementing an Exchange
server?

E-mail. First, Exchange servers may simplify the way you use e-mail. E-mail for an Exchange server is stored for the longer term so you have a history of the e-mail sent and received by the firm stored in a central place ‘ the Exchange server itself. If you are using an outside service for e-mail, particularly for POP3 Internet e-mail, the e-mail is only stored on the local hard drives of the users of POP3 e-mail, which is risky since e-mail could be lost. Exchange keeps a complete history of e-mail on the server and allows a user to replicate this e-mail to their local workstation. The benefits of this approach are
that you can work from your home,
a client’s office or from
the road and have a complete history
of e-mail available. Additional
advantages include the ability
to work from different machines
or from a web browser using Outlook
Web Access (OWA) as your mail
client. The disadvantages are
that the synchronization to a
local desktop running Office 2003
to the server can be slow, and
greater communication speed is
required to run Exchange/Outlook
than running a POP3 e-mail account
with Outlook Express. Furthermore,
you have additional licensing
fees as outlined below.

Calendar. Second, Exchange servers may simplify the way you use a calendar. The key benefit to an Exchange server
in this area is that you can coordinate
your calendar with others for
events where you all must participate.
If you want to schedule a meeting
with another partner, and use
a couple of other resources like
a conference room and a projector,
you can search for all of these
resources in Microsoft Outlook,
and the schedule for all of these
resources is maintained on the
Exchange server. The Exchange
server does the heavy work of
storing and coordinating these
schedules back to the end user’s
computer.

To-do lists. Third, Exchange servers may simplify the way you keep your to-do lists. Besides having a local copy of items that you need to do, you can use the shared to-do list functions of Exchange to delegate items that need to be completed. These items are automatically added to the to-do lists of other people and may be added to their schedule as well.

Integration. Finally, Exchange is often used as the integration tool by vendors to extract or add client names,
addresses and events to your calendar.
Microsoft has published the standards
for programmers to use to help
them create and add, or to extract
and use, the key information of
contacts, to-do items and calendar
events. Vendors like CCH, Intuit,
Thomson and others are using such
functionality to integrate with
their own products.

The key downsides to the firm
are costs and the requirements
to run Exchange properly.

First,
we recommend that a completely separate
server from the file and print server
be added and maintained to be used
by Exchange. This is particularly
true with larger firms. We are hesitant
to say it is all right to use Exchange
as an application on the file server
unless you have 10 users or less.
We would still prefer a separate
server for reliability and speed.

Second,
this server needs to be set up by
a technician that knows what he
is doing. Even if you have an in-house
technician, installation of the
Exchange server should be contracted
to an outside IT consulting firm
that knows how to properly set up
and configure an Exchange server.

Third,
you need to realize that Exchange
is a very popular hacker target.
You will want to protect the Exchange
server by adding an Internet appliance
to filter out virus attacks and
spam, such as the DoubleCheck server,
or to add more software (and more
overhead), such as Norton Corporate
Anti-virus and firewall. You’ll
want to add these to the Exchange
server to protect it from outside
attacks. Finally, licensing costs
for Exchange Client Access Licenses
need to be considered.

How much does it cost for Exchange?
Well, first you must have an adequate
server. If this is a separate server,
it should be your most powerful
machine in the organization and
be configured for reliability. Xeon
processors, 2GB to 4GB of RAM, 15,000RPM
RAID drives, redundant power supplies,
and battery backup write cache enablers
would be common. Expect properly
configured Exchange server hardware
costs to be $5,000 to $7,000.

Exchange
Server software can be obtained
one of three ways:

1. Included as part of Windows
SBS Server 2003 Premium edition
‘ the best way for small
firms,

2. With Windows server standard
edition and an Exchange server
‘ around $2,500, or

3. As part of a cluster of two
or more Exchange servers for reliability
using Windows Server 2003 and
Exchange Server Enterprise Edition
‘ around $7,000 for software
per server.

Exchange Client Access Licenses
(CALs) will commonly be $100 each.
The CALs can be used with different
versions of Microsoft Office, but
you will have the best results if
you are on the 2003 (current) version
of Office. If you have not been
upgrading Microsoft Office, you
will have additional expenses. Finally,
to install Exchange server, your
consulting group will likely need
between four to 20 hours at their
labor rate.

What about competitors? Microsoft
would simply state that there are
no competitors, and for many features
of Exchange, that would be true.
Your best alternatives today are
Novell’s SUSE Linux Exchange,
Novell’s GroupWise and Lotus
Notes Mail. All of these products
do not integrate as well with Microsoft
Outlook, but all of them have features
to integrate e-mail, calendar and
to-do functions and to use Outlook.
Remember that outsourcing your Exchange
server functions can be done with
a service like www.myhosting.com,
and this may be your least cost
approach of implementing Microsoft
Exchange.

The benefits of using Exchange are
frequently judged to be worth the
extra effort and money to implement
a shared calendar, to-do list and
for long-term e-mail storage. Having
an Exchange server available is
definitely a productivity improvement
and a convenience. With our dependency
on e-mail, and the complexity of
our calendars, having Exchange available
can be a real benefit to the firm.

Randy Johnston is executive
vice president and partner of K2
Enterprises and Network Management
Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized
educator, consultant and writer
with over 30 years experience in
strategic technology planning, systems
and network integration, accounting
software selection, business development
and management, disaster recovery
and contingency planning, and process
engineering.

Technology