Microsoft® Exchange & Rackspace® Email Exchange Hybrid

scottalanmiller

Execs don't know that O365 is a licensing model, they think it's a product. Heck, I'm not sure most execs would even know what Exchange or Domino or RS mail, etc even is.

Even a pretty entry level exec (heck, even a high school student interested in becoming an exec) would know that execs don't look up products. Execs don't research manufacturing equipment, cable makers, snack food vendors, etc. They research the right people to provide the right decisions.

If an exec is doing the research that his IT department should be doing, there is failure so early in the process that nothing that we or MS does is going to fix it. It means that no knowledgeable party is involved in the process. That's a short circuit so far back that there just isn't a reason for IT to worry about it because it means IT was never engaged. Any exec bypassing IT for IT decision making is asking to have bad decisions to be made and means that the failure is in basic management, not something for IT or vendors to fix.

scottalanmiller

@Dashrender said:

SMB execs might know a little more because smaller company, closer to the action and all..

Or less because they have more things to deal with, less exposure and fewer opportunities to be exposed to what others are doing.

Dashrender

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

Scott of course will say that that is their own fault, they shouldn't be googling anything. Instead they should be hiring either internally or externally people who are doing their jobs correctly, and that is asking what the goal is, and then finding as close an exact match to that goal as possible.

In this case the hired person would say - what is your goal? The executive would say I want to have email. Then the hired hand would do research on email solutions, and if they do their job correctly would discover plain jane hosted exchange for $4. Not sure I'd agree with that last part, but it's Scott's position - unless he says otherwise here, then I'll stand corrected to his corrected statement.

This. Or, you know, at a minimum know how to Google what you are looking for and not inject proximate assumptions into the process instead.

This assumes that you search specifically for hosted Exchange.

For a test I searched for

hosted email

cloud email

cloud based email

Hosted Exchange, to my surprise, is listed as the 5th option when searching Hosted email. It does not appear on the other two options at all.

This does bode well for Scott's argument, that whomever is searching for solutions, shouldn't have that hard of a time finding the MS provided Hosted Exchange option.

scottalanmiller

Well, my take on searching for email vs. Exchange is... if someone has decided that they need email they might look for a variety of things including Rackspace, Google and Amazon offerings that are all non-Exchange. It's a wide open question.

If they decide that they want Exchange specifically, they need to know to look for that and not something more generic.

It's like cars. If you need "a" car, you search "car". If you know you want a Fiat, you Google for "fiat" rather than car.

Dashrender

@scottalanmiller said:

Well, my take on searching for email vs. Exchange is... if someone has decided that they need email they might look for a variety of things including Rackspace, Google and Amazon offerings that are all non-Exchange. It's a wide open question.

If they decide that they want Exchange specifically, they need to know to look for that and not something more generic.

It's like cars. If you need "a" car, you search "car". If you know you want a Fiat, you Google for "fiat" rather than car.

This totally makes sense. I guess at least to me, it seems that MS has done a good job at advertising and basically in my unconscious mind changed hosted Exchange to mean O365. Damn I now have to admit that advertising has had a direct impact on me

This effect is not unique to me by any means. Many today think - I wanted hosted email on Microsoft's email platform, that means O365. The idea of a product called Exchange seems to be waning. I foresee a possible time when Hosted Exchange won't be a thing that is purchasable outside of O365. Of course this won't happen until MS kills the Multi-tenant version and the On-Prem version.

BRRABill

Yeah, I kind of consider Exchange an e-mail platform that has contacts/calendaring/tasks and that works great with everything I use.

I don't think of it as Exchange, per se.

There are products that do Exchange-like stuff, but for my money the MS version works perfectly.

Ambarishrh

Could someone please also help the OP to get some pointers to his questions? Seems like this became an active topic about hosted exchange, O365 etc Even i am curious to know about this

scottalanmiller

@Ambarishrh said:

Could someone please also help the OP to get some pointers to his questions? Seems like this became an active topic about hosted exchange, O365 etc Even i am curious to know about this

We addressed that as best as we could and are waiting on his feedback. the rest of the discussion is everyone talking while we wait for the updated information.

sreekumarpg

Hi All,

Thanks for your valid comments on exchange ,O365 licensing model.. etc.

My current requirement is to list out the possibilities of question/area that i need to check with rackspace before going for a trail. Also need to know what to test before jump into trail.

We are planing to provide normal rackspace email for casual users and exchange for power users to reduce the email cost.

Need to know anyone is using this feature and how benefit it is ? . Does the exchange share calendar work with rackspace email ? Does the resource mailbox is accessible by rackspace email users ?

These types of possibilities of question am looking forward, if any one such please share so that i can include in my list.

Thanks in Advance.

scottalanmiller

@sreekumarpg said:

Need to know anyone is using this feature and how benefit it is ? . Does the exchange share calendar work with rackspace email ? Does the resource mailbox is accessible by rackspace email users ?

They might now, but back when we were using Rackspace Email (which was excellent) it did not, so you had two completely independent pools of users. All that they could do was email each other.