How Hosted Exchange Benefits Businesses

For the majority of small and medium companies, email is essential to the everyday running of the organization. As email is such a critical business tool, it not only has to be fast and reliable, but it also needs to be able to be accessed remotely. Having this flexibility allows staff to always be in touch with the business. Although managing your email infrastructure in-house is definitely achievable, this method can be both time-intensive and expensive. Luckily, there are hosted exchange options available that allow businesses to outsource their emails to help streamline their business. Here, we discuss in more detail how hosted exchange can benefit businesses.

Hosted exchange is offered by companies such as Microsoft. When combined with Microsoft Outlook, the service offers remote and mobile email access in a secure and private way. Also known as Software as a Service (SaaS), hosted exchange services are software applications that staff access via the internet. Hosting vendors store the information on their own servers, and will manage the entire system on behalf of the company. This saves companies time and energy having to keep their email service up to date in house.

Here are some of the key benefits for businesses to using Hosted Exchange:

Scalability

Scaling an email infrastructure in-house can require purchasing additional server hardware and software, both of which are costly. Hosted exchange users however can easily avoid these costs by simply adding as many additional email mailboxes as they require.

Increased Productivity

With the ability to share calendars and have access to emails on the go, hosted exchanged services have allowed workforces to be a lot more productive.

Low-Cost

The cost of having a fully functioning hosted exchange mailbox does not come at a large expense. Usually, a small monthly fee is all it costs, which is great for streamlining cash flow. Studies have shown that the ROI of hosted exchange services is high. There is no need to invest in infrastructure, hardware or licensing of Outlook or anti-virus software. This means you can start seeing the return on investment almost immediately. Many hosted exchange services use a pay-as-you-go subscription model, meaning that businesses only pay for what they need. If new staff start, their services can easily be expanded to accommodate them. The same will apply when someone leaves the company.

Limited Downtime

There is nothing as frustrating as when your email access is down. An email outage can halt productivity and cause a myriad of other issues. Hosted Exchange providers design their networks specifically in order to keep email downtime to a minimum. This reassurance that email access will always be available is a great comfort to business owners.

Security

In this day and age, cyber-security is of the upmost importance. The security measurements in place with a hosted exchange service are a lot more robust than local security measures. This gives peace of mind that businesses can know that their data is sufficiently protected. Hosted Exchange services usually come with anti-spam and anti-virus protection built in. This can help reduce spam people and will screen for any potential online threats.

Access to Support

Outsourcing your email allows you to access support remotely. This frees up your internal IT team to work on other projects. The service provider will also always provide updates when necessary.

Frees up IT resources

A hosted exchange will free up the precious time available to in-house IT staff. Without them having to spend time on the day-to-day maintenance, they can invest that time and their expertise in other areas of the business that will benefit the business long-term.

It is important that owners of small and medium companies spend their time focusing on growing the business and growing their bottom line rather than having to worry about whether their email is working correctly. Investing in hosted exchange gives business owners peace of mind that their email infrastructure is robust, secure and reliable. Hosted services have allowed smaller companies access to these amazing benefits which previously would have only been available to larger organisations.