Microsoft has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the Microsoft Online suite. The hosted platform is a direct competitor to the Google App platform, which is currently available either for free or for as little as $50 per year.
The service plans for the Microsoft deals start from $3 per user per month – and with that plan users get an Exchange mailbox with webmail access, sharepoint server access and the basic communication tools such as messenger. The full hosted Exchange and Sharepoint, along with collaboration tools, starts at $15 per user per month – which is around $180 per year. While the alternatives are a lot cheaper, for most businesses an Exchange-based solution is at a different level than what Google or any other web-based company can provide.
Exchange already has deep penetration into the enterprise, and the online platform and suite integrates nicely with existing windows domains – so users can easily move users and mailboxes between hosted online or hosted on the local network. Pricing is a little more than what it would be with just an Exchange license, but it includes the hosted environment, administration tools and integration into other products such as hosted Dynamics CRM.
Microsoft also announced this morning that they will be paying partners a 12% fee for all new customers that they refer to the platform. Microsoft has a very large partner base (over 15,000 of them are currently meeting at the partner conference where this was announced), who are all ready to go out and sell this solution into businesses at all levels – something that Google does not have.
First!
Nice offering… lots of people want hosted Exchange, no joke..
Microsoft dish out shit with one hand (like vista) and some very interesting ideas with the other (like this).
I think the company is trying hard to change to keep up with things and they might just pull it off….
I think this is more of a reaction to MobileMe.
This is really useful, Exchange Web Mail access via IE is just the most close-to-desktop email experience you could get.
Google App has never been and will never be a realistic competitor for the enterprise-class applications that Microsoft provides. Sorry, you’re in a bubble if you think otherwise. Web 2.0 douchebags.
@Folks, Exchange Web Mail access is not restricted to IE. Works just fine in FF.
A *lot* of other companies offer this service already but most SMBs have no clue that Hosted Exchange exists…so I guess coming out with their own option is the best way to compete against Google’s Google Apps. (Although the product offering is very different.)
It’s a wise decision at an important time…but it will also create some angst in the partner community, which has worked very hard to offer Microsoft hosted applications…and will now be competing against them. Even with the high margin incentives, there’s a lot of sunk cost into building an environment to support hosted users. One of the big questions will be how Microsoft handles its support, which at present is atrociously expensive for SMBs but should be part of the deal when hosting business email. Corporate America is all about the hand-holding.
Having Hosted Exchange for my own company has been a HUGE help (we use NTTA for hosting) and I’m very curious to see how well this takes off and compares.
i wonder what will happen to smaller players like Ensim who have been providing control panels for hosted services (including exchange, sharepoint…) for a while now.
@nick: I agree completely. Nothing comes close to Exchange at the moment
@David Catalano,
The experience of OWA (Outlook Web Access) is VERY different on Firefox. Microsoft did a great job of supporting all browsers (even mobile ones with their OMA offering), but the experience on IE for Exchange is far superior with drag and drop, dynamic look-ups, keyboard shortcuts, and other features not found on FF’s version.
Did you hear if they will be supporting blackberry BES integration with their hosted exchange? I suspect a lot of companies are using hosted exchange today to get full enterprise blackberry integration.
maybe this will get google to improve google apps email performance, which is totally miserable especially when working with blackberry, etc.
@Guru, there’s still a huge market in the dedicated Exchange business and products like Ensim Unify will continue to be sold there. It’s the SMB space where this completely changes the game.
On the other hand, this will encourage companies like Ensim to get their experience improved…which wouldn’t take much.
(sorry for so many comments)
I’d also like to know if BES is supported please. I can them jump from MailStreet which is nice but $$.
The cost of this is crazy. For 1/5 that price ($40/year) you can get much more useful and reliable email with file sharing at http://www.fastmail.fm.
@fastmail fan: you obviously dont know what exchange + sharepoint is
@11 this is what people mean when they say that “IE is a superior browser”.
If they can give out outlook for free or a nominal fee it will be fantastic.
Wow. Bad day to be Appriver huh?
I guess I need to call them and ask why I’m paying them 4x what MS charges.
OWA is the best webmail system there is. I just hope they will offer this in Germany. $3 is like 1 € and some change.
I can’t find anything for BES support!!!
What a great price, last time I check into this it was like $50 per user / per month.
Found BES support. Link won’t show on this comments section, just go to the MS website and search for “blackberry and hosted exchange online” It’s a PDF of the presentation from today’s conference.
This is absolutely fantastic. I can’t wait to bring all my users over.
I currently use a combination of Google Apps and a hosted Exchange server from Intermedia.net. I have 25 accounts on Google Apps, and 3 on a hosted Exchange.
I didn’t want to shell out $12.95/user, for all my users that don’t use multiple computers or have blackberry’s, so those users were all using Google Apps.
At this price point, it’s worth bringing everyone over. I’m so utterly frustrated with the free version of Google Apps, and their ridiculously high false positive rate. I get over 4-5 false positives just in my own personal inbox — imagine what happens to my staff that probably never check their spam folder.
I just bought Microsoft stock after hearing this announcement.
For individuals and small businesses, this is a non-announcement. There are numerous hosted Exchange providers, some of which are really good and cheaper than what’s in this announcement. I recommend http://sherweb.com as an example. Although I recognize that there are plenty of businesses and individuals who won’t go with a brand they don’t know. And you can bet that this announcement is a response to MobileMe.
Love or hate MS, there still is no prouduct out (yet) w/ all the features of Exchange that are important to me, an email intensive person who carries many devices.
So if I have an iphone, can I buy a one user plan and use it to get push email when the new firmware comes out in a few days?
That would be much cheaper than mobileme.
@27
I think you need a minimum of five (5) seats. I could be wrong though so check it out, but I think 5 is the magic number.
FYI: There is a OWA Plugin for FireFox that makes it look just like IE.
it should be free for up to 100 or so accounts like google….this is not tempting….google’s solution and other open source aps are much better and did I mention, FREE….when will corporate america realize that excel is the only thing microsoft has left?
@Ryan, you’re trippin bro…
@Ryan, sorry dude but I agree with Your Daddy
Ryan how old are you? You can’t even compare enterprise mail to gmail.. or any microsoft enterprise app to google app! Once you’ve lived and worked with microsoft enterprise apps (MSCRM / Office / Sharepoint / even there business tools such as Biztalk etc etc) nothing comming out of Google even comes close to.. When Microsoft goes online they make a point of doing it the right way, good on them for taking there time to come to the market!
I cant wait for the 2.0 firmware release date, i just wish that apple would have a set release date…
Yes, MS Hosted Exchange services is an interesting challenger of Google Apps, especially considering the support component available from Microsoft Sharepoint & Hosted Exchange resellers
Yes, we used a Microsoft reseller: http://www.groupspark.com to set up our small business accounts, to resell the tools – completely White Label.
I agree: the major benefit I see is a 24×7x365 support the claiming to offer. This frees us up from hiring support stuff for our customers needing Exchange Hosting, OWA, Sharepoint, CRM etc…
This will be interesting to watch over time. We host Exchange, Sharepoint, BES and many many other SMB/ Enterprise applications. We are a MS Gold partner and now Microsoft is competing against it own partners. Not sure how I feel about that. We’re still cheaper and don’t oursource our tech support. We focus on the hand holding vs. MS does not.
I agree that some products maybe the same, yet the service may be very different. This includes reliability, uptime and support staff. Some providers operate from home apartments… or lease premises from other bigger ones.
I therefore don’t quite agree that price is the most important factor. When I was using smaller guys or some bigger who had support in Russia or India – my email was constantly going down, Blackberry Activesync failed and had all kinds of issues.
Finally I found Exchange hosting provider 123Together.com and had no issues since. The only scheduled downtime they had i was promptly notified about in advance.
Their prices are from $9.99, yet I don’t mind paying $3 per month extra for piece of mind.
Javier
We are using the hosted exchange from Microsoft’s reseller as well. The good thing is the availability is backed by 24×7 support. When we had an issue: we were able to call US number and get this resolved. i hope Microsoft Online has a comparable support structure at this low cost…
Rackspace Hosted Exchange is another good option. Works for us.
Have used http://www.mailprotector.net and found them to be great
I have recently purchase Exchange from SherWeb : http://www.sher...hosted-exchange and I love. Great price and very simple to configure. Go check it out.
Thanks
http://www.ehos...exchange.com.au any one know about them