I came across the news recently where Exchange hosting providers give lots of attention to WAN Optimization these days and I thought of giving my perspective here in this blog post.

Exchange Hoster’s Pain points with bandwidth

The Exchange Hosting industry is becoming popular day by day, with growing numbers of providers everywhere providing Messaging & collaboration services to customers around the world, these customers are mostly SMEs. Microsoft Exchange being the core component of this service, it has been evolving from old versions to provide better functionalities, features and user experiences. Now with Exchange 2007 server, users can do even better. However, what about the performance? Customers by and large work from different locations, such as on the road, in a meeting with their customers, while commuting, etc. And these users often complain about slowness in accessing email client (e.g. Outlook). In an Exchange hosting scenario, all your customers have Internet connections and high bandwidth ADSL or slow connections depend on the customer’s location and internet infrastructure readiness. So, even if the hosting providers increase the bandwidth and no of servers in its datacenter, the customers are still stuck with these basic performance issues - Latency, a nightmare word for every customer as well as hosting providers.

This application latency gets magnified over a period of time, and hosters start scratching their head to put off the fire from customers at different angles in the world. Well, things are changing as there are solutions in the market today from various companies that offer increases in application performance, reliable connections and even high availability. Recently I was reading some news in the press about Akamai that provide a solution which transforms internet into a business-quality application delivery infrastructure and the outcomes are performance, scalability, visibility and control to mission-critical applications such as email delivered over the Internet. Despite the customers being SMEs, they are spread across either regional or global organizations. So email availability is key to them due to working requirements in all time zones. Apart from this, the workforce nowadays is mobile and accessing email, contacts and calendars is really critical. As reiterated before, connections from users email client must be quick, consistent and reliable when they access this information.

What must be done to achieve this?

Following are a hosting provider’s big challenges to address these concerns from customers:

1. Consistency - To be able to deliver consistent performance to all customers in order to ensure high customer retention rates.
2. Email Resiliency - Hosting providers are solely relying on internet to provide email services to its customers. Hence build infrastructure in such a way that hosters mitigate its impact if the Internet conditions goes beyond its control.
3. Scalability - Keep increasing WAN bandwidth and no of servers may not solve the application slowness problem and latency. So the infrastructure should be equipped and be able to grow its business without complex technology and additional infrastructure overhead.

Who can help?

Certainly, WAN optimization is one of my answers to address the above concerns in general. For example, Hosters integrate their state of the art Exchange hosting infrastructure with Akamai’s proprietary transport and routing protocols to offer global sub-second response times, secure delivery and control of applications from a single, centralized data center to meet the needs of customers, partners and employees around the world. Using a similar platform like Akamai, Hosters can ensure that Internet disruptions such as circuit failures, which are beyond the hoster’s control, can be avoided in a dynamic fashion. This assures that users will always have quick and reliable access to their Outlook and Outlook Web and Mobile Device applications, regardless of their location or what is happening on the Internet. Implementing similar WAN optimization solution at hoster’s datacenter will help them achieve LAN-like network consistency, performance and reliability over the Internet.

Del.icio.us : Exchange Hosting gets better with WAN Optimization technologies
Flickr : Exchange Hosting gets better with WAN Optimization technologies
Zooomr : Exchange Hosting gets better with WAN Optimization technologies
Technorati : Exchange Hosting gets better with WAN Optimization technologies

GULF BREEZE, FL – AppRiver LLC (www.appriver.com), a leading provider of email messaging solutions, has been selected as one of the Red Herring 100, the most innovative private technology companies based in North America. The Red Herring editorial board selected AppRiver as one of 100 winners from a pool of more than 1,500 applicants. Nominees were closely evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their ecosystem.

“We can see the exciting evolution of the technology sector reflected in the quality and variety of exceptional companies that we had to choose from in putting our list together,” said Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring. “It was tough to choose just 100 winners from such a large list of excellent contenders, and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists.”

The 100 winning companies were announced today at the Red Herring North America event in San Jose, California, where the CEOs of the winning startups have been presenting their innovative ideas and technologies to an audience of leading entrepreneurs, financiers, and corporate strategists all week.

“We are pleased to be among the high-tech industry leaders and innovators represented by the Red Herring 100,” said Michael Murdoch, CEO and co-founder of AppRiver. “We got here by anticipating our customers’ needs and providing them with cost-effective on-demand solutions. That will remain our primary focus in the years ahead.”

About AppRiver

Founded in April 2002, AppRiver – based in Gulf Breeze, Florida – is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider offering secure messaging solutions to businesses of all sizes. In addition to spam and virus protection, the company provides a complete managed service for Microsoft Exchange. With more than 30,000 customers around the world – and an impressive 97% customer retention rate since its inception – AppRiver is one of the largest email security managed service providers worldwide. In 2006, Red Herring magazine named AppRiver one of 10 private security companies to watch, and more recently the company was named to CRN Magazine’s 2007 Emerging Tech Dynamos list. For more information, visit www.appriver.com.

AppRiver Contact:

Michael Hamstra
Director of Marketing
850-932-5338
mhamstra@appriver.com

About Red Herring

Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at www.redherring.com.

Red Herring Contact:

Anam Alpenia
Red Herring, Inc.
650-428-2900
aalpenia@redherring.com

# # #

As expected, Microsoft is now entered into the hosted services market. Initially they had launched Exchange Hosted Services whereby enterprises can leverage Microsoft’s proven Anti-Spam and Anti Virus services. Recently, Microsoft announced its beta release of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs), Fig 01.

Fig 01

Why such a solution from Microsoft?

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Unified Communications are difficult for small business to setup and manage the day to day operation. Also, when it comes to technology refresh/upgrade, it consumes substantial $$$$ from organization’s budget.

Industry recognizes this challenge and also, realized that this should be utilized as hosted services at its best. At the same time, maintain the quality messaging and collaboration applications.

Sounds like another hurting by Microsoft?

This is not new to Microsoft as these types of offerings have been in the market from third party vendors for sometime. But Can Microsoft outsell the competitor presently in the market? May be in the future. They do not come up with services for third party applications for example, Blackberry enterprise server (BES). This piece of application is critical for Enterprises to increase employees productivity. Blackberry continue to lead in no#1 position in Mobile Messaging Market. This is why the current offering from Microsoft may not fly for most businesses unless they extend third party integration like blackberry, which will be very unlikely.

How is this Microsoft business model compared to existing third party in the market?

All these Microsoft Online services will be sold exclusively through partners but without any partner branding. The lack of partner branding reduces the partner’s relationship with the end customer as the customer realizes that the partner is not adding any value and simply reselling a commodity service. Meaning, this is not private label exchange hosting model.

In Private Label Exchange Hosting model, third party offers their unique platforms (e.g., Private Label Application Delivery or PLAD platform is one of such platforms from 3rd party company) and its designed to help resellers in such a way that they can sell these back to resellers hosted services totally under their own brand, use their own website by customizing it with unique user interface.

What are the reseller’s benefits from 3rd Party?

The working model of “private label solution” allows the resellers to stamp their brand with their customers while offering enterprise class hosting services in the Messaging & Collaboration area. Also, helps them to broaden its market and strengthen customer relationship. Some third party offerings to resellers are beyond just email hosting, for example Hosted CRM, SharePoint and even it goes to hosted PBX.

However, one common benefit I found in both Microsoft online and Private Label solution are, resellers or partners can avoid the expensive tasks such as Setup the infrastructure, Monitoring, maintenance, upgrading the hardware and software.

BURLINGTON, MA – May 13, 2008 – groupSPARK, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the leading provider of private label hosted software services including hosted Exchange Server 2007, hosted SharePoint Services v3.0, and hosted Dynamics CRM, announced today that groupSPARK senior executive officer, Ravi Agarwal, will be speaking at the ISPCon Spring 2008 conference and trade show.

ISPCon Spring 2008 will be held at the Donald E. Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois from May 13-15, 2008. The event brings together 2500+ internet industry professionals including ISPs, webhosting providers, VoIP providers and numerous other internet industry professionals to discuss all facets of internet business including ways to increase revenue and develop new business opportunities.

Ravi Agarwal, groupSPARK senior executive officer, will speak to attendees on Thursday, May 15, 2008 on ways for ISPs and the service provider community to successfully compete in the expanding hosted services arena. His presentation titled SaaS vs. Software + Service: How You Can Survive Microsoft’s Entry into the Hosted Services Market, will speak to the trepidation now felt by resellers of hosted services worldwide regarding Microsoft’s decision to enter the market with their own hosted services offerings. Mr. Agarwal will address the explosive growth in the market and offer strategies resellers can employ to stand apart from the competition and provide value added products and services to their small and mid-size business customers.

“The hosting industry is growing dramatically as more and more SMBs discover that they can pay a small monthly fee and achieved the same level of productivity as large companies by using enterprise class messaging and collaboration tools in a hosted environment. As a result, resellers are looking to take advantage of this trend and offer these services to their customers. However, the recent press surrounding Microsoft’s entry into the hosted Software as a Service market is making many resellers reconsider their decision as they are unsure whether they will be able to compete,” said Ravi Agarwal, senior executive director, groupSPARK division of mindSHIFT Technologies, Inc. “This fear is completely unfounded. There are many ways resellers can differentiate themselves and continue to thrive in this rapidly growing market. There is enough room for everyone to be successful.”

One of the ways that groupSPARK continues to thrive in a competitive market is to offer a full breadth of private label hosted software services through their reseller channel to SMBs who would otherwise be unable to deploy the applications in-house due to their significant cost. Services include hosted Exchange Server 2007, hosted SharePoint Services 3.0, and hosted Dynamics CRM as well as 2-way wireless synchronization with BlackBerry Enterprise Server^®, Windows Mobile and Good Mobile Messaging. groupSPARK also offers all resellers live 24 x 7 technical support via phone, email and online chat which is staffed by experts based in the United States.

About groupSPARK

Located in Burlington, Massachusetts, groupSPARK, a mindSHIFT company, is a leading provider of SaaS services, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services v3.0, and Dynamics CRM, which can be completely private labeled and resold by partners as a part of their own product offerings saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in development and support costs.

Its partners utilize groupSPARK’s turnkey private label platform to provide hosted services to their users in minutes. Partners are able to address scalability and uptime concerns by leveraging groupSPARK’s 100% uptime SLA, private label 24×7 U.S.-based support and proactive hardware and software monitoring capabilities. For additional information, visit www.groupSPARK.com.

###

The RIM and BlackBerry families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties of and trademarks or registered trademarks of Research In Motion Limited – used by permission. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Last week I got an invite from Xobni to try its beta version of Email productivity tool which turbo charge outlook as well as socialize the way we use outlook. Great tool Exchange Hosting providers can recommend this to its users; this is certainly a big leap for outlook in terms of end user experience.

As per Xobni, this tool help users to find information buried in MS outlook through sidebar View which has Past Conversations & Attachments. Also, email Search done at lightning speed to locate attachments, contacts, conversations etc…

Microsoft Outlook is much better than any other email client when mail management matters and but Xobni went beyond what MS outlook offered currently in terms of email management rather socialized approach by a free add-on application on the sidebar.Look at the below sidebar in my outlook.

What does Xobni do to turbo charge MS outlook? Here are my favorite features:

1. Email search
2. E-mail analytics
3. Phone number extraction
4. Threaded conversations
5. File exchange recently
6. Xobni sidebar

Great productivity tool for any outlook users, I hope they introduce this to more beta users and release it to public in real quick. In the meantime, I am hoping that in its next version (I guess they are currently looking into it) is that Xobni show all telephone numbers from my contacts. I am wondering what criteria they are using to extract the phone number, because for anyone there are more numbers in their personal contacts.

In summary, Xobni is a fantastic productivity tool. I have installed this into both Outlook 2003 & Outlook 2007 at office and home respectively; so far I haven’t encountered slowness while working. Hoping the address issue I mentioned will be improved and also, I would like to have one more feature of corporate IM integration in its next release where it indexes the chat history & files transfer. No wonder why bill gates love Xobni and embracing it… see one of his videos where talk about Xobni.

Its Hostingcon time again. HostingCon is world’s largest event for hosted services professionals. HostingCon 2008 will be help at Navy Pier in Chicago.

Exchange hosting Service providers will eagerly look for this event,  as it helps them connect with many people in the industry, meeting with new people and exchanging business ideas and showcasing what they offer to customers. I was talking to Mr. Alon Cohen, Marketing manager in GroupSpark about this event and what their customers to look for in the event. He says,

“HostingCon is the most important Software as a Service (SaaS) related hosting event for us to participate in each year.  We always look forward to taking part in the sessions and meeting with other industry-leading hosting providers to help shape the future of the hosting industry.  We also exhibit at HostingCon which enables us to talk to attendees about our Private Label Exchange service and how they can grow their SaaS offerings under their own brand and dramatically increase their monthly average revenue per user.  This allows us to expand our groupSPARK reseller channel and enables resellers to offer enterprise-class hosted services such as hosted Microsoft Exchange Server, Windows SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM to their customers.  We expect that interest in HostingCon and knowledge of hosted software services will dramatically increase this year with the additional press generated recently about the availability of new SaaS solutions.”

So look for Exchange hosting companies and most importantly understand what they have to offer in Hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007. In general, you will use Microsoft Outlook to manage your calendar, contacts, tasks, and emails. Since you are connected to Exchange Server in the hosting provider, everything in the outlook follows you.

With Windows mobile device or Blackberry, these data are available on the road. iPhone is yet to release the Activesync version, hope to see this in few months time. In most cases, a free copy of Microsoft Outlook is offered to per mailbox you buy. I am not sure about the price, but generally it starts from $9 per month for a mailbox. Price varies for different providers or if you add more functionality to the mailbox.

Now Outlook Web Access gives you extended access to your inbox in the event you do not have access to your own PC or your mobile device, provided the pc is connected to internet and preferably comes with IE browser recent versions. Hosted services on dedicated and shared servers have lots of difference in performance and prices. So leave this to your decision.

Nothing is concluded without Antispam & Antivirus services offered by them…Hope you have a great time in Hostingcon; unfortunately I am not able to make it this time. But surely on next year Hostingcon…