ExchangeCloud™ FAQs
General
There are lots of hosted e-mail services around...
What's different about the Quantix
ExchangeCloud™?
Three things. You get a dedicated Exchange Server, so you are
not sharing a message store with other customers. A (fully managed
by Quantix) site to site secure VPN connection means that your
Exchange Server operates as if it was on your own LAN; user can
access email using Outlook and your other applications like CRM,
ERP and SharePoint can access and integrate with Exchange
seamlessly. Finally, the whole service is underpinned by the
Quantix Cloud platform which gives you unrivalled scalability when
you need it with guaranteed failover and resilience.
Will the ExchangeCloud™ save me
money?
You get access to the latest collaboration technology (Exchange
2010) without having to spend money on new servers, storage,
environments or support resources. Exchange 2010 offers
unrivalled services for replication, resilience and archiving but
often needs new infrastructure to support that along with the
skills to configure it all. ExchangeCloud delivers everything
you need - with extendable storage pools and enhanced security -
for an all inclusive monthly fee, based on number of users and the
storage pool required. Savings on TCO over 3 years can be as much
as 70%
Where is my message data physically
held?
All of your data is held in our UK data centres. Your primary
Exchange will be at our Derby data centre with a mirror image copy
(for automatic failover) at our Wakefield centre.
How will I know my company data and messages are
secure?
Quantix will provide you with a dedicated Exchange Server
environment; you wont be sharing message stores with others.
And our enterprise grade security is the best available in the
industry, as an example a user accessing e-mail externally will be
subject to up to 9 seamless security checks.
How long can I keep my e-mails
for?
For as long as you like. Most customers will specify 3, 5 or
7 year policies in line with their individual compliance
requirements but you can create bespoke retention policies (for
example by user or group) if required.
How are my Blackberry and IPhone users
supported?
The Quantix ExchangeCloud includes full support for most commonly
used mobile devices, including of course Blackberry and
iPhone. A dedicated BES server can be configured as part of
your ExchangeCloud setup.
What happens if I hit my mailbox storage
limit?
ExchangeCloud comes with a generous storage pool across users, but
if you need more, you can increase this at any time. The
Quantix Cloud provides a highly scalable resource pool, for CPU
power, memory and disk storage. If you need more, you can
have it within minutes. Any additional costs are taken care
of by your price plan.
How are new users added? Who is responsible for
doing that?
You continue to add new users to the Exchange just as you do now,
by adding new users to the appropriate profiles with Active
Directory. User security remains fully under your control and
there are no extra steps involved.
What happens if my hosted Exchange Server
fails?
Your dedicated Exchange Server runs on a cluster of virtual
machines within the Quantix Cloud. Like all our other
cloud services, there is an automatic failover to a backup set of
virtual machines should the primary service encounter any
problems. Such a failover is completely transparent to your
users. This exploits both our standard VM technology and the
business continuity architecture designed into Exchange 2010.
As standard, the Quantix Cloud Platform provides a level of
resilience - for even the smallest customer - that can
normally only be delivered in large corporate data centres.
What service availability levels can I expect to
recieve?
As standard, your message store is available and accessible 24x7
backed up by an availability guaranteed by SLA of 99.9%.
Why should I use the archiving function within 2010
when I already have an archive system on-site?
Moving to the ExchangeCloud and using the built-in archiving
functionality within Exchange 2010 takes away the problem of a
second portal for users. Users will be able to search their
archived mail as they would with their live mail. This simplifies
the whole archiving and retrieval process, making it lot more
user-friendly.
Does this mean I could remove all the PST files
located on local machines?
Yes. Users will no longer need to worry about keeping within thier
mail quota limit as email will be automatically archived after a
set time period. It also means that large PST files will be a thing
of the past, helping to increase the performance of local machines
and ensuring business continuity and compliance as no local PST
files will be lost should the local machine fail.
Will I be able to lower my storage costs with
ExchangeCloud Archiving?
Yes. The high costs associated with storage and archiving in
particular have been seen as an issue. By moving the archive to the
cloud, you can take advantage of a pooled resource of storage
across all of your users. And, as it's provided as a service, the
large upfront cost associated with storage is removed.
Technical
How do I connect my users to the
ExchangeCloud™?
Users already logged on to your office network connect to you
hosted Exchange server over a secure site-to-site VPN. For
customers with demanding enterprise requirements we also have the
ability to provision WES circuits, Leased Lines or accept MPLS
tails from customers networks.
Once established, this operates as a LAN Extender to your own
network, with single authentication and all services under Active
Directory control. Users only need to sign on once. Your Exchange
server appears as if it's running on your own network. Users can
access email and other Exchange services ising Outlook (or though
any other Exchange supported client). Applications such as CRM,
SharePoint or ERP can also use Exchange services as if it was a
local instance.
Remote users (e.g. mobile or home workers) connect through our
Secure Connect Service (based on ISP class Juniper firewalls) and
Microsoft Forefront to establish a secure VPN connection to your
dedicated Exchange. Their experience can be configured to
reflect who they are and what device/location they are connecting
from as well as arrange of other parameters.
What information security options do I
have?
As part of our standard setup, Quantix provide a best practice
security configuration based on standard Exchange 2010 back-end
server with a DMZ located front-end server (OWA). Session security
is provided by our Firewall/ IDP layer and Microsoft Forefront
which delivers your own instance of Exchange over a dedicated VPN.
This gives you total security as your Exchange is not being shared
with other users (which is the case with many other hosted Exchange
services).
Access to your Exchange is controlled by our ISP class firewalls.
For mobile users, we can provide a number of additional access
control services, including two-factor authentication should you
require it.
For additional protection, you can also add encryption at VPN level
(AES) or at message level.
Who is responsible for patches and
upgrades?
Quantix take care of this for you, to the highest technical and
support standards.
Do I have to install anything on my own
servers?
No. ExchangeCloud operates as an extension of your LAN and
doesn't need any additional services.
How is SPAM controlled?
Quantix standardise on Websense Hosted Mail Security which delivers
a 99% SPAM protection SLA. Customers can have access to the control
panel for policy and reporting purposes.
What Anti Virus protection is
provided?
Anti Virus protection is handled at several different layers. First
e-mail is scanned in the Websense cloud through 3 commercial AV
engines, plus a proprietary heuristics engine to capture zero day
virus attacks. SMTP traffic is then subject to scanning on entering
the Quantix cloud and finally mail is scanned at an Exchange server
layer. In addition to the above steps we can also offer the ability
to provide security access controls to users wishing to access OWA,
if a named user doesn't have the correct AV update we are able to
quarantine and remediate the user prior to granting access.
Do I still need to backup my Exchange
database?
No. We take care of this for you with a schedule of managed nightly
backups to ensure there is always a recoverable copy of your
business critical data in both our primary and secondary data
centres. We can also make use of the replication facilities
which are built into Exchange 2010, to ensure that a mirror copy of
your message store is ready to be used in failover mode at any
time.