Exchange / Server technicians?
 

Anyone have any recommendations on techs?
I need some things setup (Outlook anywhere, SSL) and some consultation on our upgrade path. Currently on server/exchange 2003.

Thanks!

Sea to Sky Network Solutions - Managed IT Services and Support, Vancouver

Jason or Mike. Worked with them at my last place to set up a Small Biz server with in house exchange / remote connections / server/back up upgrades / general equipment upgrades.

I work for a consulting company that does that all and more.

PM your business info if you want.

If its a small business i suggest you move to online services as its a better way and its 99.9% always available. most of them are $5/month per user for massive email space.

CPG Systems - local company, old buddy of mine owns it. Good guy, knows his shit.

What size environment?

Hosting these days can be very economical for small environments of under a few hundred users, given that number of features these companies are providing (Archiving/ high capacity storage, external connectivity, web access, mobile devices) versus what they would cost to implement in house.

I suggest finding consultants that have referrals with customers of similar size to you. Its easy to over or under provision your infrastructure through someone with out the correct knowledge (or spend way too much on consulting). Microsoft has consulting services but bill quite heavily and I would only recommend them for larger 20,000 + user solutions with complicated migration strategies. Compugen and Myra can fill in the gap from small to enterprise. I can only recommend solution providers on the island for small deployments unfortunately as I have limited experience with contractors in this space and would probably just host anything needed online.

If its just some very basic questions post them here and I can answer them to get you started in the right direction.

My experience with messaging spans about 8 years of various size deployments and migrations - currently managing a team of analysts and am the architect for messaging services in a large enterprise (25k+), and can likely set you in the right direction (and no I don't consult :P )

Id say the following is a general rule of thumb.

<100 : Host online
101-1000 : Consult for design and deploying, have in house staff with general knowledge. Analyze cost of hosting - there is a break even point somewhere in this range.
1001-10000 : Have specialized staff for operational admin, consult planning, strategy and design.
10,001+ : Dedicated staff and solution designers. Consult around large scale planning.

Yea I want to move the hosting and such online, but the dinosaurs here feel safer with the backups on hand and taken home everyday. We are still about 2 years from a complete overhaul at which point I will try to take everything online. We only have 50 users worldwide and only run 1 email and 1 app server.

I was just trying to activate outlook anywhere for the boss, but the SSL stuff was a bit over my head. I might have it figured out with my self issued one, but I have to wait for the weekend to test it out again. Long story short, boss insists on going Mac (for himself only), only entourage 2008 is compatible with Exchange 2003, entourage blows, OWA isnt enough so I have to convert her back to Windows, therefore I need to setup the method most resembling the in office experiance.

Thanks for all the help guys!