Exchange Online comes with your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscriptions, so if you’re already paying for the mail application, why not use it? By migrating to Exchange Online you will eliminate the need to ever buy or maintain a mail server again. As we discuss below, Exchange Online offers several advanced, enterprise-grade security features, and your employees will be more productive and responsive if they are able to communicate while on the go.
Here are a few more reasons why you should get rid of your on-premise mail server and migrate to Exchange Online.
Access your emails from anywhere
With Exchange Online you can have access to all your emails from anywhere. There are significant productivity gains that can be had from this seemingly simple enhancement. Now you can reply to your customers on the go or respond to emails from your Boss. The best part is that access to your emails is platform agnostic meaning you can be on Windows, Linux, Mac OS or even mobile (Android/iOS) and still be able to see and respond to emails.
Move Some Mailboxes Online and Leave Others On-Premise
Not ready to move your business entirely to Exchange online yet ? Not a problem! Exchange Online provides the flexibility to keep some of the user mailboxes in your on-premises servers and others in the cloud. Hybrid deployment allows you to determine what makes sense for your organization. Perhaps you want to free up resources on your on-premises servers by migrating users with large mailboxes to the cloud.
99.99% Uptime
Microsoft has an impressive SLA that goes up to 99.99% in most quarters which means that you will no longer have to worry about any outages or services being unavailable. Microsoft’s huge financial clout enables them to maintain multiple servers in secure locations in different parts of the world, this ensures redundancy so your data is available at all times.
Archive mailboxes
Exchange online allows for existence of archive mailboxes along with user’s primary mailbox. Users with large mailboxes can have their old mails automatically moved to the archive mailbox keeping the primary mailbox clutter free and responsive. The contents of archive mailbox can be searched and accessed anytime just as if those emails were still in your main mailbox.
Mailbox Management is a thing of the past.
Most Exchange admins need to keep an eye on a few users with extra-large mailboxes, but with Exchange online, this is no longer the case. 50 GB user mailboxes in addition to shared and resource mailboxes of 50 GB each means that there is very little mailbox management to be done as you get ample room to comfortably send and receive anything.
E- Discovery
Exchange online takes the complexity out of E-discovery process by facilitating advanced search across your entire tenant. This makes preserving data especially metadata for purposes of litigation much easier.
Litigation Holds
Litigation holds allows for retaining of mails even after being deleted by the user. This information can then be used to recover accidentally deleted mails or for legal compliance matters. Let’s have a look at some of the features of Litigation Hold that Exchange Online offers:
- Save a copy of the original mail as backup.
- Keep the data forever or for a specified duration of time.
- Save copy of the mailbox items deleted by user.
- Save copies of mails deleted by Messaging Records Management (MRM).
- Hold items based on pre-set criteria and put a user mailbox under multiple different Holds.
Mail Flow automation
You can use the transport rules or mailbox rules in Exchange online to automate mail flow. Admins can set transport rules to set encryption, add signatures to all emails, do away with approvals for message delivery etc., whereas users can make use of mailbox rules to move messages to folders of their choice, set customized alert sounds etc.
Your data is Secure
Exchange Online comes with all the same enterprise-level security features in Office 365 comes with. Likewise, Exchange Online is constantly evolving with Microsoft releasing Security patches for it and all of that is taken care of by Microsoft.
Exchange Online Protection
Exchange Online Protection includes several spam filters that help prevent spam in your mailboxes. All of your security preferences can be managed from the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center so that it’s applied across your platform to all of your Office 365 apps.
Encrypted mail
Exchange online can encrypt all the data going to and coming from the clients irrespective of the platform. All email communications will take place through encrypted channels only if both sending and receiving organizations allow for it.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
You will no longer have to worry about the security of your data thanks to Exchange Online DLP. Simply put DLP policies are conditions that can be created via the Exchange Admin Center comprising for transport rules, actions, exceptions etc which when activated helps you prevent leakage of any sensitive information
Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
Preventing unauthorized access has never been more easier than now. With MFA, you can choose to require more than just the username and password. MFA can be configured for all users or select groups.
If you're approaching an Exchange server upgrade or refresh, talk to ANP before moving forward. Our Secure Cloud Advantage bundle includes the migration of and management of your Exchange Online application.
We're happy to assess your current environment and help you determine if Exchange Online is the right move for your business.