Hosted Exchange Vs Gmail - Part Two

In a few previous articles, I have discussed the hot topic that is the comparison between a Hosted Exchange solution and a Google Apps solution. I’m going to take another look at this still-burning subject and continue the comparison in this article.
As a reminder of my previous discussions, I took the perspective of someone who is using Microsoft suite/tools for other IT needs: they may be using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel for example, or Microsoft Outlook for managing their collaboration tasks: e-mail, calendar, tasks, contacts.

So here is the second set of the comparison list (please feel free to view the first part of my article here). This time, I have also included some features that are important for IT managers – things that won’t necessarily matter to the end-user, but are definitely a competitive advantage for your IT manager.

Google apps: no synchronized group calendars for teams. This facility allows you to share calendars and timelines as well as track project timelines. Coupled with Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Outlook, a Hosted Exchange solution seamlessly integrates to your company’s workflow and allows synchronizing of group calendars.
Meeting attendees and responses: should your company go for a Google Apps backend instead of a Hosted Exchange solution, then invitees can’t do a ‘tentative’ schedule: the only options available to them would be ‘accept’ or ‘decline’ only. Moreover, when sending an invite, you can’t specify people whose attendance is ‘optional’.
Limited social networking feature: with a Hosted Exchange backend, within your Microsoft Outlook 2010, you can be informed when any of your contact’s social networking status is updated from LinkedIn an Windows Live. Moreover, you get a history of your discussions with that particular contact in a simple manner.
Blackberry support: this is a bit technical, but with a BESx implementation, a Hosted Exchange provider can get his client running with a Blackberry solution without the need to have an on-premise Blackberry Enterprise Server- which is not the case for Google Apps which requires that the client has their own Blackberry Enterprise Server.
Server search: while with a Google Apps implementation, a mobile user can only search from their ‘downloaded’ e-mail, a Hosted Exchange solution can do a server search meaning that the search will be done on the entire group of e-mails that reside on the server.
Encrypted mail support: while both Gmail and Hosted Exchange support it, Gmail charges an extra fee for its Postini service.
Hybrid services: while a Google Apps solution is a hosted-only option; a Hosted Exchange can be combined to an on-premises Exchange server thereby allowing a portion of the infrastructure to be run on-site and the other portion in the cloud.

While we expect that most of these features would be implemented by both solutions as technology evolves, it is clear that integration of a Hosted Exchange as well as its flexibility is a definite advantage compared to a Google Apps implementation - especially if your corporation already has another Microsoft-based solution running (Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Sharepoint). Add to that the fact that when moving from an on-premises Microsoft Exchange, there will be a much smaller learning-curve since most of the features and interfaces will already be familiar to you, your users and your IT managers.

By: Nick J Davies

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Hosted Exchange 2010 is a business grade, cloud-based email service available from Giacom World Networks. Share email, calendars, contacts and tasks with Hosted Exchange.