Microsoft Email Tools for Advisors in 2010 Hot

The new Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 has some compelling features for advisory practices to consider as an email solution. These include enhanced email archiving, message retention and search functions.

While in the past - if your business did not choose to host your own Exchange server - you could not fully capitalize on Exchange email features - Microsoft is changing that. Now, with Exchange 2010, the solution can be outsourced and purchased on a user basis - meaning shops as small as four or five on a team can leverage the new functionality.

Key Features include:

• Included email archiving features that allow an administrator to define types of messages and how long they must be maintained
• User who have a local email archive using Outlook on the PC will now be able to access and search that archive online via web access (a big issue in current versions of Exchange server)
• Practices can assign differing administrative roles to IT staff, Compliance principals and other for multiple mailbox access
• Voice mail can be routed through the server to support the "unified communications" concept - users can listen to or read text transcripts of voice mail
• The Exchange service can be hosted at your office, or hosted online, or in a mixed (hybrid) approach - this should help expose the new product to varying sizes of practices.

Additionally, Microsoft is introducing Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange - their first attempt to provide security against malware and spam natively. They made a similar change with Windows 7 - providing a base security suite to protect a PC at no cost. 

There is certainly no need to leave Google Apps and move to Exchange 2010 - as Microsoft is just now catching up with Google on features and functionality. However, if you currently are looking at solutions for email hosting at your practice, add Exchange Server 2010 to the list of candidates to be considered.

If you plan to review this solution - certainly take the 30-day trial of the online hosted Exchange and Google Apps - this will give you a sense for the performance you will get. It will also enable you to get a feel for both vendors capabilities on multiple web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer) and from multiple locations (home, office, travel). If you run your business on Macs (my primary platform though I also run Windows) then I would point you to Google Apps. Microsoft solutions will be optimized for Internet Explorer, though they should work in other browsers.

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