Vancouver-based managed hosting provider Peer 1 Hosting announced a
partnership with Microsoft said to offer customers fully featured,
enterprise-level e-mail services. In addition to the Peer 1 hosting
services, this offering aims to deliver a cost-effective way of
managing SMB (small to medium-size business) customer mail
environments.
The hosted Microsoft Exchange solution is a scalable solution
that gives users the ability to collaborate without having to invest in
mail servers, software licenses, security or be involved with ongoing
system administration. Users can share and access calendars, tasks,
contacts, public folders, groups and global address books as well as
synchronize from their desktop, mobile device and the Web. The packages
start from $10 per mailbox, per month, according to the company.
The hosted Microsoft Exchange solution will be deployed through a
Web-based automation platform with customers being able to administer
users and feature benefits. Each mailbox will have three Gigabytes of
storage, which will be pooled space on a per-customer basis. Users will
be safeguarded through McAfee SAAS Email Protection, which works
outside the network to guard against viruses, spam, worms and other
harmful content. Customers' e-mail data will be protected with multiple
daily backups and a 14-day free-of-charge file recovery capability.
"Customers want an easy and cost-efficient way of managing their IT
infrastructure, inclusive of e-mail services. With our business-class
e-mail packages, customers no longer need to provide or manage their
own mail servers, backups, licensing or security,” said Peer 1’s vice
president of product development, Tim Varma. “It is engineered to save
customers time, effort and costs whilst offering unrivaled Peer 1
service and support."
Hosting customers will be able to benefit from Peer 1's 10GB
SuperNetwork backbone, a series of dedicated links between the
company’s data centers using multiple high-speed connections. This is
coupled with peering relationships with more than 500 networks and
multiple Tier 1 upstream providers.
“By offering hosted Microsoft Exchange as a service, Peer 1 Hosting is
able to provide attractive IT options to its customers,” said
Microsoft’s general manager of worldwide hosting for the communications
sector, John Zanni. “Businesses are increasingly interested in
communication and collaboration tools to improve productivity and
reduce costs."
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