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Follow UsThough there are number of IT players who offer Hosted Exchange services, many SMEs are yet to benefit from the productivity gains because of the high costs and need to hire technical staff to manage and operate e-mail servers.
GlobalOutlook, a key player in the Hosted Exchange services segment, also offers such solutions which, it claims, suit the budget-constraint SME customers.
The company offers access to e-mail via Windows Mobile-based devices using built-in Microsoft ActiveSync and Hosted Microsoft communication, SaaS business communication and collaboration solutions. White Label hosted email, SharePoint and Office Communication Services (OCS) and Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) services are also in the company's products portfolio.
CIOL talked to its CEO, Raghu Kumar, to explore more about the company's products and services, and to know the latest trends in Hosted Exchange services.
CIOL: What is your product portfolio for startups and SMEs?
Kumar: Following are our offerings to SMEs.
Business Email: We offer Hosted Exchange as well as a hybrid solution for companies that have users on different platforms (i.e. Exchange and non-Exchange such as Linux)
Mobile: We support a range of devices as well as Blackberry Enterprise Server.
Business Chat/Conference: We currently offer Office Communication Server and plan to extend our offering with Lync, the new product from Microsoft later this year. We see this as a major advantage for both SMBs and the enterprise with employees in multiple locations. Their users can utilize the chat function, save those conversations in their email and launch conference calls.
Content Collaboration: With SharePoint, companies can do more than share documents. They can use workflows for a variety of functions (HR, Finance, and Project Management) and benefit from tight integration with Outlook.
CIOL: How do you deal with the security concerns of your customers?
Kumar: Our solution is hosted in a Tier IV data center, which employs access control and other security measures. We also use best in class McAfee’s anti-spam and anti-virus solutions to protect our customers. Additional security details are listed below:
Physical security: Our datacenters adhere to the strictest standards in physical security. All premises are closely monitored and guarded 24x7x365 with sophisticated pan/tilt CCTV covering every part of the facility. More over, access to servers is restricted to a limited number of authorized engineers and coupled with internal audits.
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Firewall Protection: We use multiple redundant, enterprise-class firewall systems to ensure that no unauthorized users can access our customers’ Exchange environment. This system is a purpose-built security system that integrates firewall, VPN, DMZ (De Militarized Zone) and traffic management to prevent unwarranted intrusions and ensures that only authorized requests are processed Intrusion.
Detection System: In addition to our firewall protection, we also use an intrusion detection system (IDS) that detects malicious network traffic and computer usage that often cannot be caught by a conventional firewall.
Auditing, Logging and monitoring: GO security team is responsible for daily, weekly, and monthly and yearly data auditing.
Data Backup: Our customer’s data is replicated three times; twice in our primary data center. For added protection and rapid point-in-time restores, regular database snapshots are taken in data center. This architecture protects customer data in the event of hardware failure, database corruption or even a catastrophic data center loss. Because data is replicated across live working data centers, customer access to the full functionality of their exchange environment in the event of a disaster can be restored in a timely manner.
Servers and Storage: Our Exchange servers are based on a passive-active cluster server configuration to provide seamless failover when a cluster node is unavailable or is taken offline for maintenance. Redundant and load balanced Exchange front-end servers also increase reliability.
Your data resides on a storage area network (SAN): With total redundancy — clusters of disks in a RAID array — if one fails, the system continues working. Intra-SAN and tape back-ups ensure there is no single point of failure anywhere in the storage system.
Network: Our network has two diverse entry points which manage traffic flow to the Internet, with another dedicated high-speed connection to our failover site. That second location has a failover link to a third location nearby. Together, these three facilities provide ultimate uptime in connectivity.
Traffic inside the Exchange environment is managed by routers and switches. An advanced Net screen firewall protects the Exchange infrastructure, with all ports closed except for essential ones and 100 per cent of incoming traffic monitored by anti-spam and anti-virus applications.
24X7 Monitoring: All servers are monitored 24X7 using a comprehensive Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) management system. This allows immediate detection of both potential and actual issues, which are tackled by our multiple technicians on standby, day and night. MOM looks at a full
range of metrics, including central processing unit (CPU), memory and disk space utilization, the size of the mail queues, the status of Outlook Web Access (OWA), different Exchange related ports and remote procedure call (RPC) latency.
CIOL: Microsoft's Office 365 is one of the best solutions in the market as of now? How better is your product or platform when compared to this?
Kumar: Office 365 is a strong offering but is not customized to company and user needs. We offer models such as our hybrid offering which allows a company to have the necessary services per user group and manage their costs effectively. Once you are a GlobalOutlook customer, you have a live person to answer your questions. Office365 does not support BES in India, but we do.