Item: Microsoft Exchange
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Exchange across out whole company, spanning multiple sites. It enables us to effectively communicate and coordinate with calendar features across departments. Coupling Exchange with Outlook gives us a reliable platform for messaging. We make use of several third party applications which integrate seamlessly with Exchange and Outlook as well. Upgrades are fairly straightforward as are patches. We feel that we get a good benefit for the resources dedicated to this application.

Pros and Cons

Public folders are still supported and allow for effective handling of incoming requests.
Department level calendars allow for excellent coordination of schedules.

Better integration with cloud based mail would be welcome.
Native deduplication for mail databases would be a useful feature.

Return on Investment

We were able to easily absorb another site and their users in our Exchange environment utilizing existing scripts.
Using powershell for management tasks has cut down change time and the error rate as well.

Alternatives Considered

Google Domains

We have a GSuite account for certain uses but still prefer to host mail onsite with Exchange due to all of our entrenched dependencies.

We also use Sendmail and Postfix on our Linux based machines for various messaging tasks, but these do not work so well for us as our every day business email platform, mainly due to lack of integration with third-party tools.

Support Rating

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.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft Exchange delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Exchange's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Exchange live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Exchange go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Exchange again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Veeam Backup & Replication, Notepad++, LogMeIn Rescue

Likelihood to Recommend

If you require on premises mail as we do there are few alternatives to Exchange in a business environment. Tight integration with Outlook makes training users fairly easy as Outlook is the de-facto leading mail client. Most businesses need an on premises SMTP server, and this fits the bill.

Where Exchange would be less appropriate would be a new company without a significant investment in on premises infrastructure and Active Directory. Using cloud based messaging would most likely be the best path forward for them, and the most forward looking.

Exchange continues to be the gold standard for on premises messaging.

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Exchange