19 Reasons Exchange Online is Winning

What’s Exchange Online?

Exchange Online is Microsoft’s hosted email for businesses. It’s the industry-leading cloud
solution adopted by small businesses and fortune 500 companies. Microsoft Exchange Online
provides the benefits of a cloud-based email service with the robust capabilities of an on-
premises server deployment. Simply put, Microsoft will store, manage, and secure your
businesses email for a low monthly cost. Microsoft is always looking to improve the capabilities
provided to customers, so they continually ask, ‘what do you like?’ and ‘why did you choose
Exchange Online?’. Here are 19 answers that come up repeatedly.

1. Access Anywhere
Easy access to email from anywhere is essential to improving sales, productivity, innovation, and
customer engagement. Salespeople can increase sales by responding to prospects faster.
Managers can approve projects and proposals faster to increase agility and innovation. The
front-line worker is empowered and optimized to improve productivity and increase customer
engagement. Exchange Online is top of its class with anywhere access. You won’t need a VPN
or your work computer. Users can easily configure their smartphones and tablets or access their
email on any web browser. Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS the access is always available.

2. Reliability & Available Anytime

Microsoft has a financially backed SLA for 99.9% up time. Below is a list of up-times by quarter
since 2015:

Microsoft manages multiple data centers across the world. If a large storm is hitting an area,
Microsoft will seamlessly migrate your email to a safe data center. Your organization will keep
moving, regardless of world events.

On a more personal note, I manage over 100 tenants, I’ve been working with Office 365 since
the beginning and I cannot remember the last time I had a major outage.
3. Hybrid Flexibility
One of Exchange Online’s primary selling points for mid-size and enterprise organizations is its
hybrid flexibility. Deploying email in a hybrid configuration an organization can keep some user
mailboxes on their on-premise Exchange server while moving others to Exchange Online. This is
a great way to migrate to Exchange Online using a staged migration. User migrations between
on-premise servers and the cloud are seamless. Hybrid deployments are a great way to move
heavier workloads off of your on-premise servers freeing resources to be used in other ways.
Lastly, hybrid deployments give an organization the flexibility of the cloud, allowing massive
increases and decreases in users and usage without a capital expenditure.

Pro-tip: Take those few pesky users with 15 GB mailboxes and move them to Office 365;
continue running the rest of your small mailboxes on premise. Office 365 will even let you use
their SPAM filtering for all your users without the additional cost! If you’ve seen there recent
financial reports you wouldn’t mind letting them fork the bill!

4. Single-Sign-On
Integrating your on-premises directories with Exchange Online makes your users more
productive by providing a common identity for accessing both cloud and on-premises resources.
Users and organizations can take advantage of the following:

 Users can use a single identity to access on-premises applications and Exchange Online.
Users won’t need to remember additional passwords, decreasing the number of password
resets and support incidents related to authentication.

 Single tool to provide an easy deployment experience for synchronization and sign-in. Since
user accounts created on-premise are used for your Exchange Online authentication,
admins won’t need to create multiple accounts, decreasing the time it takes to deploy new
users.

 Without single-sign-on administrators are required to deactivate accounts in multiple

locations when an employee is terminated. Every account increases the chances of an error
causing a security vulnerability.

5. Large Mailboxes & Emails

50 GB mailboxes; 150 GB archive mailboxes; 150 MB email sizes. Employees will never have to
worry about managing their mailbox growth again. Keep everything! Send anything! Every couple
of years Microsoft increases the limits. Shared mailboxes and resource mailboxes have a 50 GB
limit too, and the best part? Shared mailboxes and resource mailboxes are completely free.
Every team can have a shared mailbox (marketing, sales, help desk), and every conference
room can be automatically managed through Exchange Online, for free!
6. Real-Time Collaboration with Office 365 Groups
Office 365 groups are completely unique to the Office 365 experience. A team in your
organization can create a group. The group will have a special shared mailbox where members
of the group can post updates and make notes on emails and collaborate in real time. All in a
special secure area for the team! Office 365 groups are free with your Exchange Online tenant
so make as many as you want!

7. In-Place Archive
“Exchange Online Archiving offers users advanced archiving capabilities with the archive mailbox
feature. An archive mailbox is a specialized mailbox that appears alongside the users’ primary
mailbox folders in Outlook or Outlook Web App. Users can access the archive in the same way
that they access their primary mailboxes. In addition, they can search both their archives and
primary mailboxes.”

Archive mailboxes are a great way to allow users to have HUGE mailboxes while automatically
moving old information out of their primary mailbox into a separate archive mailbox. Moving the
data keeps their primary mailbox small and fast while allowing the users to keep everything so
they don’t have to waste time cleaning up their inbox. With the automatic archiving system, which
has customization GALORE, no one will waste time with maintenance!

8. E-Discovery
E-Discovery can be one of the most boring, yet important things IT manages. “Electronic
discovery (sometimes known as e-discovery, ediscovery, eDiscovery, or e-Discovery) is
the electronic aspect of identifying, collecting and producing electronically stored
information (ESI) in response to a request for production in a lawsuit or investigation. ESI
includes, but is not limited to, emails, documents, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and
video files, social media, and websites.

The processes and technologies around e-discovery are often complex because of the sheer
volume of electronic data produced and stored. Additionally, unlike hardcopy evidence, electronic
documents are more dynamic and often contain metadata such as time-date stamps, author and
recipient information, and file properties. Preserving the original content and metadata for
electronically stored information is required in order to eliminate claims of spoliation or tampering
with evidence later in the litigation.”

Exchange Online allows admins to search across the entire tenant to find exactly what you
need. Exchange Online takes the complexity and management of E-Discovery out of the hands
of admins and builds it directly into the product!

Since Exchange Online is one of the most popular products on the market, almost every 3rd
party tool can be added on. If you’re happy with your Barracuda, Mimecast, or another service,
continue to use it. It’s no problem for an Exchange Online admin!
9. Litigation Hold / In-Place Hold
Litigation Hold & In-Place Holds are the latest evolution, or alternative, to journaling and email
backups. It’s a way to keep email even after a user has deleted it. Holds solve two problems in a
simple and effortless way:

1. Electronic information storage for compliance and regulation requirements.

2. Backup and recovery of accidentally deleted items.

An excerpt from Microsoft “When a reasonable expectation of litigation exists, organizations are
required to preserve electronically stored information (ESI), including email that’s relevant to the
case. This expectation can occur before the specifics of the case are known, and preservation is
often broad. Organizations may preserve all email related to a specific topic, or all email for
certain individuals.”

Before we talk about litigation hold let’s review journaling. Journaling has been a way to
permanently store all email within your organization. It’s typically configured along with backups.
Journaling is configured in case an organization ever needs to prove something for a legal
challenge. As anyone who’s managed journaling before, it can be tedious and time-consuming. If
you’re managing the journaling destination, the emails pile up quickly. Mid-sized and enterprise
organizations may require a dedicated administrator for journal management. Constantly creating
new mailboxes and redirecting journaling to the new locations. Large amounts of processor and
storage must be dedicated for the filing, archiving, and indexing of the journaling mailboxes. An
alternative to self-hosted journaling is using a third party such as Mimecast. These third-party
options work very well and will typically need little maintenance to manage. Most third-parties
work with Office 365, in most cases, they work with Office 365 better than on-premise or
alternative email hosting platforms. Many organizations are still choosing to use third-party
journaling over litigation hold. They’re both fantastic options.

Holds work differently. Journaling will send a copy of an email to another location. Litigation Hold
will maintain a copy of the email in place. A user can still delete the email or content as they’d
expect, but Microsoft will continue to retain the email in a hidden location only administrators can
access.

In Exchange Online, you can use In-Place Hold or Litigation Hold to accomplish the following
goals:

 Enable users to be placed on hold and preserve mailbox items immutably

 Preserve mailbox items deleted by users or automatic deletion processes such as MRM

 Protect mailbox items from tampering, changes by a user, or automatic processes by saving
a copy of the original item

 Preserve items indefinitely or for a specific duration

  Keep holds transparent from the user by not having to suspend MRM

 Use In-Place eDiscovery to search mailbox items, including items placed on hold

Additionally, you can use In-Place Hold:

 Search and hold items matching specified criteria

 Place a user on multiple In-Place Holds for different cases or investigations

10. Automated Mail Flow Rules & Disclaimers

Is there anything better than automation? Getting more done while doing less? It doesn’t get
much better than that! Exchange Online has two different ways to automate mail flow: transport
rules and mailbox rules.

Transport rules are configured by administrators. They’re commonly used to require encryption,
apply disclaimers or signatures to every email. Other common options are requiring approval
before delivering messages and prevent sensitive information from accidentally leaving the
company. There are a ton of different ways to filter the transport rules and create rules as
granular as needed.

The other type of automation is performed by the user on a mailbox level. This is where users
can automatically move items to different folders, apply special sounds when important emails
arrive, etc. Mailbox rules are a great way to help employees improve efficiency and organize their
mailboxes.

11. Compliance
Exchange Online meets many compliance and regulations certifications. Microsoft uses third-
party auditors to certify they meet the compliance and regulatory goals. Not only does Exchange
Online meet large regulations such as ISO 27001, European Union (EU) Model Clauses, the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Business Associate Agreement (HIPAA BAA),
and the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) but Office 365 is also designed
to meet local requirements for data management. Exchange Online meets the following
regulations:

 HIPAA / HITECH

 ISO/IEC 27001

 ISO/IEC 27018

 SOC 1

 SOC-2
  DISA

 FDA 21 CFR Part 11

 FERPA

 Argentina PDPA

 CSA-CCM

 CS Mark (Gold)

 ENISA IAF

 EU Model Clauses

 FedRAMP

 FIPS 140–2

 FISC

 FISMA

 GxP

 CCSL (IRAP)

 Japan My Number Act

 MTCS

 NZ CC Framework

 Section 508 / VPATs

 SHARED ASSESSMENTS

 ENS Spain

 UK G-Cloud

Pro-Tip: Compliance isn’t configured out of the box. Special commands must be run on each
mailbox and rules must be applied in your organization. Don’t leave compliance to a non-
compliant admin.

12. Security
Today, cyber-criminals are more organized and motivated than any time in history. It is easier
than ever to attack an organization. Criminals have become organized and now offer Cyber-
crime as a Service (CaaS). CaaS is a kit or service you can purchase to attack people and
organizations. They’ll target known exploits. Without proper patching, maintenance, and a
 dedicated staff your organization is more susceptible than ever before. Fortunately, Exchange
Online has world-class protection from cyber-crime.

Employees want the freedom to access the applications and data they need on whatever PC or
device they choose — whether at the office, at home, or on the road. At the same time, you need
to make sure data is protected and available only to the people who should have access.

Exchange Online has automatic, always-on protection. Microsoft has a dedicated staff to keep
your organization safe from new threats. Patching is automatic, and maintenance is always up-
to-date.

13. SPAM Filters

100% of known viruses blocked. 99% spam stopped. All email into Exchange Online is fed
through 5 different SPAM filters! The filters can be customized to allow certain partners,
safe/dangerous IP addresses, content filtering, and more. For additional security, many third-
party solutions are available, for example, Mimecast. Can you tell I’m a fan of Mimecast? When
using a third party SPAM filter, Exchange Online can be configured to prevent any mail except a
list of safe senders.

Outbound email is also secured. Designed to prevent spoofing to keep your organization off
blacklists. I’ve been working with Office 365 since its inception (it used to be called BPOS) I
haven’t had to remove a single organization from a blacklist. Anyone that’s ever had to deal with
those troubles is a little excited about that!

14. Encrypted Email

“In computing, encryption is the method by which plain text or any other type of data is converted
from a readable form to an encoded version that can only be decoded by another entity if they
have access to a decryption key. Encryption is one of the most important methods for providing
data security, especially for end-to-end protection of data transmitted across networks.” —
 TechTarget

Exchange Online provides encryption at every level and many ways to encrypt email outside of
your organization.

 All data is encrypted at rest. “Data at rest” refers to data that isn’t actively in transit. In
Exchange Online, email data at rest (sitting on a hard drive in a secure data center) is
encrypted.

 Exchange Online will encrypt communication going to and coming from the client. Whether
the client uses Android, Apple, Outlook, Windows, Mac, or a web browser.
  Email to other organizations can get a bit tricky. The email protocol doesn’t require
encryption but supports it. Exchange Online will always try to send and receive email over
encrypted channels. If another organization doesn’t allow encryption, the email will be sent
in plain text. BUT, an administrator can require email between two organizations to be
encrypted (and it’s a whole lot easier to configure in Exchange Online than on-premise).
Also, a user can encrypt an email using Office Message Encryption. If a user is sending
confidential information, they can add encryption to the email and ensure the security of the
data transmitted.

15. Data Loss Prevention

Who hasn’t laughed too hard and had a little leakage, am I right? (I swear I’m an adult writing a
professional blog.) Eventually, every organization will have someone accidentally send
information they shouldn’t. Whether it’s a credit card number, social security number, or some
other protected information. Exchange Online can identify and protect against the loss of
sensitive data.

You can educate your users about DLP policies and help them remain compliant without
blocking their work. For example, if a user tries to share a document containing sensitive
information, a DLP policy can both send them an email notification and show them a policy tip
that allows them to override the policy if they have a business justification. The same policy tips
also appear in Outlook on the web, Outlook 2013 and later.

16. Multi-Factor Authentication

“Multi-factor authentication is a method of verifying who you are that requires the use of more than
just a username and password. Using MFA for Office 365, users are required to acknowledge a
phone call, text message, or app notification on their smartphones after correctly entering their
passwords. They can sign in only after this second authentication factor has been satisfied.” —
 Microsoft

I use MFA for most of my accounts nowadays. It’s one of the best ways to prevent unauthorized
users from accessing your account. With Exchange Online, MFA can be enabled for everyone or
a subset of users. This flexibility allows an organization to test MFA, or only secure the most
critical accounts such as admins, and accountants.

17. Smartphone Access Control & Security

Using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to access to work email, calendar, contacts,
and tasks play a big part in making sure that employees get their work done anytime, from
anywhere. But it’s critical that you can manage and secure these devices when they’re
connected to your Exchange Online organization.
Exchange Online will allow a user to sync their email, contacts, calendar, and tasks directly to
their handheld device. Exchange Online has the capability to require a secure device in many
ways:

 Block, allow, and wipe a device remotely. If a device is lost or stolen, an admin to login to
the Exchange Online admin portal and wipe the device or email.

 Admins can configure access rules for specific device families and models. When a new
security vulnerability is discovered on older devices, Exchange Online admins don’t lose any
sleep! They can quickly track and report on those devices in their environment and block
them from future access.

 Exchange Online also hosts a series of different device policies. For example, an
organization can force all users to encrypt their device or require a complex password to
unlock the device.

18. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Exchange Online comes with a myriad of support for BYOD. Since it’s cloud-hosted, the users
can access their email from their home or on the road. Supporting all common email protocols, a
user can access their email on any device using any mail software they want. Thanks to
AutoDiscover, a protocol designed by Microsoft to make client setup easy, a user can jump in
without support from an administrator. Lastly, the browser is always a possibility for email
access.

19. Automated Maintenance & Updates

Exchange Online is the fastest evolving solution on the market. Microsoft automatically provides
security patches and product enhancements without any intervention from users or
administrators. Automated updates mean less time maintaining and more time growing.

Don’t have Exchange Online or Office 365? Take a peak at the different plans and sign up for a
free trial today.
Exchange: On-Premises vs Exchange Online
On-Premises Exchange to Office 365: Is it worth the move?
In South Africa and Africa, the growth of the public cloud has given SMBs more opportunities for a better
return on investment on their IT services. Organisations that manage their email service can either keep it on-
premises or migrate to an online email environment.
Microsoft has set a new tone for IT services for SMBs, with the launch of Office 365. Small businesses can
now benefit in many ways from the functionalities included in one single offer to enhance their ability to work
from anywhere, at any time from any device. From Exchange emails to collaboration tools and Office Apps,
Microsoft Office 365 is taking over as the go-to solution for SMBs but in some instances even Enterprises,
public sector as well as the banks.
When considering Office 365, organisations which currently offer Hosted Exchange environments are under
pressure of churning their customer base. Businesses managing their Microsoft Exchange email system in-
house are also faced with an important question: should we move our email to Office 365 or keep our
Exchange servers in-house? What are the benefits and what will happen if we don’t?
Each option has its pros and cons. This article offers some guidance relating to making an informed decision
when deciding between e-mail as a true cloud service or keeping it on- premise and ensuring that you align
your IT cloud strategy accordingly.
So what are the advantages of running Microsoft Exchange on-premise
1. Stay in control of your Exchange data
Your data integrity and longevity depend on you. You decide on the backup timing for your mailbox
databases and how the backups are stored or destroyed. Your data is always stored on-premises, whether
it’s using online drives, backup tapes or your own remote storage.
2. Stay in control of your activities
The hardware and email platform are all yours. You decide on the configuration, run upgrades and
changes, as well as the timing. The full maintenance is your responsibility, including the installation of
updates regularly provided by Microsoft. You decide on the mailbox sizes offered to your users. You can
implement as many services as you want to provide your users with: ActiveSync, Webmail, public
folders, transport rules, etc.
3. Having more flexibility for your customisations
In-house Exchange servers offer more flexibility when it comes to the integration of third-party
applications. As long as both the Exchange and other application servers are hosted on the same local
network, it’s much easier to interconnect them. You can set email for your multifunction printers,
notifications for your customer relations management applications, communication to receive faxes
through email and more.
Disadvantages of running Microsoft Exchange on-premises
1. Why spend so much on hardware and license costs?
Your initial investment is not the only cost associated in running a Microsoft Exchange on-premise
environment. Maintaining both the hardware and the application requires resources, and an appropriate
budget. Your hardware needs to be refreshed or replaced every few years. Licensing versions needs to be
updated and you stand the risk when not running the updates timeously.Furthermore as technology
evolves and new versions of Exchange are released it sometimes requires different configurations than
the previous version. The administrators taking care of the platform need regular training to keep up with
changes in technology. These are costs you can’t necessarily control, but have to factor into your overall
budget.
2. What are the security risks to your business?
Whatever happens, you have to resolve problems as quickly as possible. You therefore must be proactive
to configure your network, systems, and Exchange platform against possible threats. This may require
you to hire more professionals and get support contracts with your security solution manufacturers.
Security incidents do occur and they may have disastrous consequences.
3. Can you provide guaranteed uptime and availability?
The reliability and uptime of your in-house Exchange solution absolutely depends on how much you are
willing to invest in the platform. Guaranteeing a 99.99% availability or better requires a costly
infrastructure.
4. What would be the impact on your business if your data is lost?
Since your data is stored in your own hardware, if a disaster occurs and you don’t have a proper Disaster
Recovery Plan, you might lose your email and servers. Building a business continuity strategy can be
very costly, depending on the options you choose.

The beauty of Exchange Online (Office 365)

1. Full scalability at your fingertips

Some Office 365 offers include email, calendars, and contact management. You get exactly the
same basic features you have on your on-premises Exchange platform with a guaranteed service
level. Each user gets 50GB of online email storage that can be synced on smartphones (including
BlackBerry devices), tablets, PCs and MACs using ActiveSync. You only purchase email accounts
for the number of users you have.
There is no need to overspend to guarantee for future account storage. In the same way, you can also
decrease your number of licenses freely from one month to another. You can set up the service for a
new employee in minutes.
2. Huge savings when you move to a Capex model
Price flexibility is one of the biggest values of Office 365, because you get more than just the email
service with your subscription.
First, there are different plans to choose from. Second, depending on your needs, you can either
choose to have Office Online, or the Office Suite installed on your devices, or both. The Office
Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) can be installed on up to 5 mobile devices, 5 PCs and 5
MACs, for each license. Third, don’t forget that you also have access to other services that you’d
pay for if you installed them on-premises. A non-exhaustive list includes SharePoint Online, Skype
for Business, and OneDrive for Business. Finally, you manage all your services from the same
point, which makes life easier for you and provides end to end productivity to your users.
3. Reduce risk of losing your email data
As one of the top global cloud providers, Microsoft invests a lot in security so you can have peace
on mind for your IT services. You can enable multifactor authentication for your accounts to harden
the access to your email. Microsoft also provides a guarantee against disasters such as power
outages, floods, fires, and more, so your business can still carry on, no matter what happens. Cloud
providers make sure they have backups to restore data whenever it’s necessary.
4. Always up to date
With Exchange Online, you always have the latest solution for your email. You get access to all the
enhancements and innovations for servers and clients as soon as they are released. Your users can
quickly adopt the changes to enhance their productivity. There is no need to plan for a long upgrade,
as everything happens seamlessly. Your corporate IT teams aren’t involved in the change.
Disadvantages of Exchange Online (Office 365)

1. Migration can be a hassle

Depending on the Exchange version you’re running, the steps to complete the migration might
require a lot of effort, starting with the prerequisites. Finding a deployment partner with the skill to
complete a hybrid deployment and migration project is critical and will require a once-off
professional services cost. Working with an MSP, you can benefit from expert advice and get a
dedicated team that can guide you through the process. This will guarantee a smooth transition and a
quick adoption of Exchange Online.
 2. Rolling back to an on-premises solution is uncertain
If you host Exchange servers in-house, you have full control over your platform and how it evolves.
With Exchange Online delivered through Office 365, you benefit from the most stable environment
for your email that includes all innovations and enhanced functionalities as soon as they are
released. You are free from paying for initial maintenance and upgrade costs because you pay a flat
monthly fee for Office 365 email. However, you lose flexibility when it comes to the integration of
third-party applications. You might also not know how you can integrate your data back into your
organisation if you want to cancel your Office 365 subscription.
3. You give up some of the administrative control
Because the infrastructure is set for multitenancy, you don’t have access to the Office 365 Exchange
servers. You cannot configure third-party solutions that include mass mailing of Internet messages
or require an installed software component on the Exchange server. You don’t get a root or
administrator password for anything. Office 365 is set for the best security.
The choice is yours however Microsoft Exchange Online is a very attractive proposition to customers. First
Distribution suggests looking into hybrid cloud options for email and other solutions. If you are interested to
learn more about how Office 365 can help your business improve productivity and collaboration, let us
know…