MS Exchange vs Microsoft Online

Exchange 2010

Yes

With IBSPoint, you get the latest version – hosted Exchange 2010 – while the competition is one version behind. Hosted Exchange 2010 provides access to Outlook Web Application (OWA) 2010 – a more robust version of OWA 2007.

No

Latest version available – Exchange 2007.

Outlook Software

Yes

Free copies of full version of Outlook 2007 provided to each user at no additional cost.

No

Only a trial version of Outlook is available with Microsoft online. Users are asked to buy their own licenses for continued use, for a cost of $109.95.

From Exchange Online Standard Service Description: “It is the customer’s responsibility to procure, deploy, manage and support Office Outlook 2007 for use with the Exchange Online Services.”

Enterprise Level System Access and Security

Yes

Personal user ID and password provide secure access to services.

No

Standard MS Live ID used to access all services.

No Contracts to Sign

Yes

Month-to-month agreements, no annual commitment.

No

Yearly commitments and early termination fees.

Fully customizable mobile device policies

Yes

Blackberry Enterprise Server and ActiveSync for iPhone and Windows Mobile devices are available. We do not require that you purchase the BlackBerry license, it’s included, and IBSPoint helps you set up the service and provides support for it.

No

Only support for BES functionality. Customer needs to bring their own BES licenses and include MS in their support agreement.

From MS Mobility Solutions: “With the Hosted Blackberry service, the customer has the following responsibilities:

Provide MS with RIM BES Server Routing Protocol (SRP) Identifier, BES license, and client access licenses (CALs) to enable deployment of BlackBerry services in Microsoft Online Services data centers.

Include Microsoft in it’s existing RIM support agreement of level TX2 or higher as a “named caller” to enable the Microsoft to contact RIM on the customers behalf…”

Enterprise-grade SLA

Yes

99.999% uptime – no more than six minutes of downtime a year.

No

99.9% – no more than nine hours of downtime per year.