Email is one of the essential services in any modern organisation.  An email server running Microsoft Exchange inside your organisation can make sense if you need more than about 5 mailboxes.  The advantages are:

• it is easy to give every member of staff a mailbox
• mailboxes can be accessed from any computer on your network
• the email store is backed up centrally
• the email store is protected from viruses centrally
• anti-spam technology can protect all the mailboxes together
• a mailbox can be accessed remotely from home or another location

These are significant advantages over standalone POP3 mailbox arrangements.

Spam is probably the No.1 problem that people experience when it comes to email.  Spam is unsolicited commercial email.  It can account for anything up to 90 % of email traffic.  An email server can filter and deal with spam at the point it enters the organisation and well before your staff have to deal with it in their mailboxes.  If the spam is offensive (which some of it can be) then having server-based antispam technology is an excellent solution to the problem.  The Telematics Centre usually recommends Symantec Premium Anti-Spam for this purpose as it is a straightforward upgrade from Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange.

When all email for your domain(s) is delivered to your own email server it is important to consider what will happen if your email server becomes unavailable to the outside world.  The most likely reason for this is if your broadband Internet connection fails for whatever reason.  What happens is that people sending email to you from outside your organisation will have their emails returned as undeliverable.  The Telematics Centre therefore recommends the use of an SMTP mail backup service so that, in the event of your email server being unreachable temporarily, email is delivered automatically to a backup service.  When the email server becomes available once more the backup service will re-deliver all mail to the server.

Outlook Web Access is a technology which allows you to access your mailbox through a web browser from any computer in the world, so long as you are connected to your computer network.  The latter can be achieved using a Remote Worker VPN Connection.  Your staff can then get access to their email from home or from another office, even when on holiday on the other side of the world!

If you ask the Telematics Centre to make a proposal for an email server for your organisation we will first clarify your requirements, including:

• the type of Internet connection and router in use
• whether there is an existing server of suitable specification
• how many mailboxes will be required
• whether anti-spam technology is required

Once these requirements have been clarified we will provide you with a written quotation (usually by email) covering the whole job.  When we have received your approval we will then:

• plan any required migration of broadband Internet connection from one provider to another;
• supply and install any new router at either site;
• supply and install any new server hardware;
• supply and install the email server software;
• create mailboxes for existing network users;
• supply instructions for remote access for users having a Remote Worker VPN Connection
• configure the server so that all new accounts are automatically allocated a mailbox;
• test and demonstrate the roaming access to a user's mailbox from any computer;
• fully document the work in our detailed documentation on your computer installations.

As usual, we take care of all parts of process for you, leaving you to relax and enjoy your new email services.

Cost:  the Telematics charge for setting up an email server depends on a very wide range of factors and is therefore quoted on a per-job basis.