Killing Exchange, Google & The Cloud

I remember the day like it was yesterday... Our exchange server was turned on, Charles programmed our T-Mobile Dash smart phones and all of sudden I had instant sync's - through the air - of all of our emails, calendar events and contacts. It was July 2007 and we had just made a very significant investment in hardware - 3TB of hard drive space, an Intel Duo Core processor, triple redundant power supplies, all running Microsoft Server 2003, Exchange and a host of other software programs - I wasn't too happy about those spent dollars, but I loved the new resources I was experiencing on my Dash. I couldn't open attachments to my email and HTML wasn't supported, but damn I loved my new features.

Now almost 3 years later, and we've done something that I never thought we would do... we actually have killed our Exchange Server. We sell servers... though not our core business, we do sell them. So us killing our Exchange is almost a bit like biting the hand that feeds us, though maybe only feeds us a snack.

There was nothing wrong with our server... it's worked and has performed well, but there were weaknesses; some were glaring and dangerous, like not having any emails if we lost power or internet - this was, for us, the main reason for killing exchange. Another was just possible failure of hardware.

(Check out this video from Google Apps that shows how Motorola Mobile made the switch from Exchange to Google Mail and Google Apps Premium addition.)




However, the biggest reason was Microsoft itself. We were operating on Exchange 2003 and making the investment to move to 2007 - when everything worked fine as it was - wasn't making me happy.

Then along comes Google...

I kept hearing stories of Google Apps and how Motorola Mobile (watch the video above), with with 14,000 mail box seats, Intuit and other big corporations, had made the move the Google. If they could do it... then why couldn't Convergex? So I started doing research and I quickly made the discovery that I could do everything with the Google email Apps - including syncing with Outlook, calender & contacts - that I was currently doing with Exchange and all for $50.00 per seat, per year including support!

All of a sudden it meant no worries about loss of power, internet or hardware failures; I no longer need to VPN in to sync my Outlook on my Laptop to the exchange server... I simply open Outlook on my laptop and within a few second all my emails are updated... right from the cloud.

We've lost internet at the office several times since 2007... once for a somewhat significant time after Hurricane Ike and we lost a good bit of emails, we had battery back-up and I even had places to get reliable internet access, but with the server down... we couldn't get our emails. Now with Google and the cloud... I don't worry about any of that.

We singed up for a service from Google called Google Apps Premium Edition. We pay $50 a year per seat and Google Premium Edition provides us with Google Email, Calender, Docs (a nice feature that lets you create forms and other custom documents), Video (a video chat and collaboration suite all recorded and hosted on Google servers), Google Sites (a simple point and click website creator), and includes 800 help desk support. Actually, all these features just mentioned can be done at no cost... the $50 per seat is actually for the support feature.

All of this is accomplished in the cloud and is powered by Google's massive server farm. I figured, why not let Google make the investment hardware? We don't have to invest any longer in new server hardware, Microsoft Server programs or costs to maintain that piece of our business... it a huge savings... combined with better security, access and processing power.

It's Win, Win, Win all over!

Yes killing Exchange was weird! It seems like we had just made the advancement to Exchange - and less than 3 years later we didn't need it anymore. Also, in a real sense it really brings home where technology is heading and it's a piece of our business that I can see will be slowly going away. Less or no hardware. Less or no hassle (we haven't made one tech support call - everything just WORKS) and everything is moving up... Up to the cloud we go!