Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).
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Mimecast Advanced Email Security
Score 8.8 out of 10
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The Mimecast Secure Email Gateway is a messaging security option with anti-spam / anti-malware, data loss prevention, large file send, and other features, from UK company Mimecast.
Given all businesses I have worked for used Windows OS and Microsoft applications, it makes sense to stick with Microsoft Exchange. It's a given that if you use Microsoft applications you should use Microsoft Exchange.
Barracuda - We've previously used barracuda and this has been much more powerful of a product with much more granularity. We also considered IronPort and Trustpoint
You can use Microsoft Exchange Server with peace of mind for e-mail, calendar, communication, scheduling, and collaboration services. Microsoft's Exchange Server is a product designed to provide users with access to the messaging platform from mobile devices, desktops, and web-based systems. Telephony features in Exchange Server support voicemail. Exchange Server successfully offers high availability service with Microsoft Exchange Database availability groups.
Mimecast is good when you are needing a basic email security platform. It does some basic things really well, but when you start hitting some advanced needs, it lacks. Mimecast does not do a good job with BEC detection. Mimecast does spam filtering alright, but it could be much better. It really doesn't care about gmail or other external addresses. It doesn't check for age of accounts, etc.
As we have a large user base of 11,000 users we use MailTips to avoid people getting confused with people with similar names in the organization.
The integration between Teams Meeting and Resource booking is generally very good. The Scheduling Assistance makes it easy to scan calendars and find free periods to provisionally scheduled events.
Marking yourself as Out of the Office and busy is easy, as is sharing your calendar within the team/organization or individuals.
Voicemail integration and the ability to receive missed chats in your inbox are highly used and useful.
The two main factors for the better reliability & Uptime of internally hosted Exchange Server depends on Exchange Server configuration and the level of investment the organization is willing to provide for hosting the Exchange Server On-Premise Environment. As the data is stored in the organization’s hardware, any disaster may lead to the loss of email and servers.
Losing data might affect business continuity and rebuilding it can be costly.
Security remains a major concern.
Security of data loss is main concern. To ensure that, organization needs to configure networks, systems and Exchange platform against possible threats.
The Admin Management console is absurdly complicated. For every first time we wanted to setup we've had to call their support for assistance. Support is quick and fantastic but it's so difficult to do anything yourself. They seem to have gone out of their way to call features unique things instead of using standard language from other providers so you as an IT professional know what you're looking for to setup.
They have lots of KB articles, which their support will point you to. They are written on the most basic level and don't actually provide the help you need. For example, the KB page will tell you the list of options on the page... but not actually tell you what you do, why you might use them, or define their terminology.
Their email threat management system has several nice features. One of the features available is that it will rewrite links in emails so that users click the link and it sandboxes the link, testing it on their server space and the user sees it there. This means the actual link in the email gets changed to the address of one of their servers. As a law firm, the EXACT LINKS are important to maintain in our communications and editing actual data from our clients to point to a Mimecast server is an unacceptable practice. I wish they had an alternative that did not edit the link itself on the page.
Microsoft Exchange is well suited for inexperienced Messaging Admins and veterans alike. If you have no idea of the fundamentals of modern email (SMTP, mail headers, MX Records, SPF/DKIM, Encryption, etc.) and just need to get people's mailboxes and calendars the support they need, you can use it with confidence. If you are an old pro and want to leverage and dovetail your Powershell and AD with Exchange, you will be rewarded for your efforts.
Yes using the same administration console is good, as user that you have assigned limited functionality to the console, they are already familiar with it when you increase their functionality. The new portal does take a bit of getting used to, but i can see that it is an improvement on the old version.
We have a good enterprise agreement with Microsoft which affords us quick phone support. I have found the support staff knowledgeable and prompt with a solution when required. At times it may be difficult to schedule a call back, this is mainly due to our need for calls early in the morning which happens to be during a shift change at Microsoft support.
When calling them you get best in the world customer services but as previously mentioned their online community and capabilities are a bit lacking. They want you to log into their portal to see updates on issues (vs. using a public facing service) and I rarely find the answers to my issues in electronic format. Their online presence is only helpful with the simplest of issues.
Implementation/conversion can be quite complex and, unless you have certified Exchange administrators in-house, you should strongly consider a 3rd party consultant for this implementation.
Most of the 365 subscriptions include desktop and cloud versions of Microsoft programs. These "traditional" software may be installed on a desktop computer and used offline without any problems, as long as you have a working Internet connection. Because so many firms still transmit each others file's developed locally using these applications, despite this being an era of cloud computing– there is a strong case for keeping desktop versions available.
Previously we have only used the default on-premise exchange that comes with SBS. This was very simple and only provided basic filtering of spam and junk mail. We weren't able to filter impersonation mail or emails with malicious code
It has been an important factor in allowing seamless communication with clients and scheduling business meetings, which in turn works in the company's favor.
Haven't noticed any negative impact Exchange has had on our ROI. The support team is also responsive and helpful.
Reasonably priced solution, even for a small business like ours.
It's hard to put a figure on our ROI - I would just say we feel like we've gotten our money's worth with the advanced email protection we receive. We have definitely avoided many potentially dangerous emails since we've implemented this solution.
