Hosted services

Other providers offering hosted Exchange include Fasthosts, whose services start from £9.99 (ex Vat) per user per month, and Simply Mail Solutions where mailboxes start at £4.99 (ex Vat) per month.

Microsoft also offers hosted email based on Exchange, as part of it’s Office Live solution, which also includes a hosted web server, Sharepoint workspaces and a range of business applications – the exact content dependson the subscription.

Messaging and groupware services based on open source alternatives are another option. For example, as well as Exchange, Simply Mail Solutions can provide email and collaboration services using a hosted implementation of the Zimbra open source solution.

Tommie
Other companies offer groupware and information-sharing functionality as a service independent of email. Examples of this include Tommie and BT Workspace.

Short for Total Office Management Made Incredibly Easy, Tommie provides web-based tools to share and manage the kind of information on which small businesses thrive.

Each user, for example, has a calendar that can be shared with others to organise their time, arrange meetings, book holidays and so on. They can also manage contacts, fill in timesheets, and do their expenses online while managers can, similarly, keep an eye on things, approve holiday requests, collate timesheets and, generally, run the office from a browser.

The interface is very straightforward, with tools provided to change its appearance and customise what you see, by adding text and logos. You can also import existing information such as contact lists, although not directly from Outlook at present.

Data is held on a secure storage array and continuously replicated to a backup system, with 128-bit SSL encryption used to secure all communication between the host servers and its clients.

A flat rate of 10p is charged for each user per day, and customers are invoiced monthly in arrears. Users can be added or removed as required, with no limits on how many you can have. Performance is largely dictated by internet bandwidth, with broadband giving the best results, although the service is optimised to give usable results even on dial-up and via wireless hotspots, with support for handheld computers another key feature.

BT Workspace
BT’s Workspace service uses Microsoft Sharepoint services to provide tools for groups of users to share information and work on projects collaboratively.

Each user has their own workspace, accessible through a browser, with an online calendar, task and contact manager, as well as space to securely store documents and other files. A separate shared company workspace then acts as an intranet, providing a bulletin board and discussion forum, plus a company-wide shared calendar and access to common customer and other contact lists.

Independent workspaces can also be created to manage specific projects, each with their own calendars, discussions and shared files. These workspaces can be shared with other users and extended to create an extranet by inviting customers and business partners to collaborate as either observers or contributing participants.

SSL encryption is used to secure client connections to the service, and it’s possible to import contacts lists from Outlook and other applications for use in BT Workspace.