Item: Microsoft Exchange
Rating: 10
Author: Ian Hansen

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Exchange

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Exchange Online extensively, and have some clients that needed to have on-premise Exchange servers that we also set up and configured. Exchange provides us e-mail, calendaring for meetings and invites, and contact sharing. I also appreciate how it integrates with the other Microsoft Office suite applications such as Teams and Word.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Rules and filters for sorting e-mail
Customization of e-mail formatting and views
Inviting multiple users to meet and reserving resource rooms for meetings

Cons

Installation requires extensive knowledge/certification
Hardening to make secure requires additional knowledge

Return on Investment

Increased visibility to important communication (and less clutter)
Meetings are scheduled and organized centrally
Time has been saved due to complex filtering and mail transport rules

Alternatives Considered

G Suite

There are a few e-mail providers for business out there, but none are nearly as robust and versatile as MS Exchange. There aren't really any out there anymore that even seem to come close. Google has their G Suite, but the mail rules don't work as well, and the only other was Novell's GroupWise and that's long gone.

Likelihood to Recommend

MS Exchange is beneficial for large-scale business organizations or non-profits that require collaboration. Its features are robust and extensive and support and documentation is adequate to maintain. Any business that wants to stay organized and have a universal platform that ties well into other collaboration tools such as Teams should consider Exchange or Exchange Online. Smaller organizations may not need all the features.

Microsoft Exchange Feature Ratings

Comments

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Exchange is Powerful and Useful