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Being truly mobile with Hosted Exchange

Some time ago the guys at Opality offered me a trial on the Hosted Exchange servers. This service really makes working from your mobile extremely easy and fully functional.

Straight off the bat, once my account was up and running on the Opality hosted exchange servers, I made the changes to my Outlook client to connect with the exchange server and I was up and running. I then moved all my contacts, calendar and mail to the exchange server. This was simple enough, just drag them onto the exchange server folder on the Outlook client and it started moving the information.

The idea of moving the information to the exchange server was so that I could share my contacts and calendar with other staff and also would now be able to use my phone as an extension of my PC, or should I say an extension of my Outlook workings.

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Mikehub.net

Web on the go
Created: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:14:26 GMT in Tech
[NOTICE: I am affiliated with the company I mention below, yet this post is neither requested by them nor paid for.]

The web has gone mobile. While a few years ago WAP sites were rare, and if they existed near useless due to sparsity and bad maintenance we now have a vast amount of mobile internet devices (MIDs) and WAP/GPRS (EDGE) capable cellphones, as well as those that can connect to the internet at high speeds via the 3G network. Apple, though I regret admitting it, has given the mobile web market the biggest boost with the iPhone 3G (and now the iPhone 3GS). Since then we all use Facebook mobile, have little applications on our smartphones to update our Twitter statuses and check the stock market with Opera Mini or Internet Explorer Mobile.

One main reason I recently upgraded from a simple 70$ phone to a smartphone is to be able to receive my e-mails on the go. While my cheap phone technically supported this I wanted a phone for efficient e-mailing, and got the HTC S710, which comes with a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard and was the first smartphone to be shipped with Windows Mobile 6. Another reason why I chose this phone was because it came with Windows Mobile. While I am not a great fan of Windows Mobile because of its sluggishness it allows me to install a vast amount of applications, such as Skype, on my mobile phone.

Now I actually got my cellphone (mobile phone, cellular telephone, however you call it) through a company called Opality Comunications and with it I got a trial of their hosted Exchange service. Opality is based in Cape Town and is a pretty recent start-up. They are a franchise of the British original and use the existing infrastructure provided by Opality UK, which consists of multiple, redundant, data centres across London.

Now what they offer is a Hosted Exchange service, amongst others, which allows any company, be it a small start-up with just 4 employees or a global player, to enjoy the advantages of Microsoft Exchange, while not having to enter into a multi-year contract or even install and maintain their own servers.

Once you set your domain's MX records to Opality's servers all your e-mail will run through hosted exchange. These are just a few of the benefits:

• total redundancy
• no server setup or maintenance costs
• month-to-month contract - you can cancel anytime
• you pay per user, not for more than you need
• monthly fee includes a Microsoft Outlook 2003/2007 or Entourage 2008 license
• automated Outlook setup
• Outlook web-access for e-mail from anywhere
• works on any Exchange-capable device
• Opality is a Microsoft Gold partner and Blackberry Alliance member, you can get cellphone contracts for all major South African network providers through Opality.

If you work in a company with a few employees and maybe some work around town and are constantly out of the office then Opality is for you, as they can offer you shared calendars, e-mail on the go via Exchange with total security with state-of-the art data centres.

Oh, and you can of course try their service out as a trial first, just send them a mail to info(at)opality.co.za.

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Imod

A great email platform for your devices
Churned out on July 15th, 2009

Opality offers a World Class Email platform to and across a broad spectrum of devices (Laptops, Macs, Outlook, PDAs, most Cellular Phones- BlackBerry’s, iPhones, Nokias etc etc)

Our service offers Microsoft Exchange with BlackBerry integration with access via Free Outlook Client, Free Entourage, and Microsoft Outlook Web Access. Effectively the power in our platform is offering simplicity to our users and no hidden costs (Free Licences, Free Installation, and Support) - basically allowing companies to manage their IT spend with our platform creating an obvious benefit: decrease in costs and increase in productivity!

Other real benefits include full scalability (Month to Month Contract), pay for 100 Users today, next month scale it down or up with a controlled spend- Including Licence fees and software upgrades!! All stored in State-of-the-Art Government secured locations (Multiple sites). Our Service is fully backed by our SLA to our clients including a Free Trial to ensure our solution makes perfect sense!
We are Microsoft Gold Partners and BlackBerry Alliance Partners!

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ITWeb

Opality debuts multi-device data exchange
By Alex Kayle, Journalist

[ Johannesburg, 11 August 2009 ] - Microsoft gold partner Opality has rolled out a hosted software-as-a-service solution which integrates Microsoft Exchange software with any mobile or PDA device.

Opality Hosted Exchange allows a user to link information from their PC or laptop to any mobile device via a unified virtual exchange that synchronises e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks and business applications.
Brad Rouhana, sales director of Opality's local office says: “One of the key benefits of Microsoft Exchange is the ability to manage all your e-mail from one key mailbox, by having your primary business e-mail, with say Google Mail or other secondary accounts being polled into your primary account.”

According to Rouhana, a user can manage their work and private e-mails on the same device. He adds that the solution has no upfront capex and is a fully scalable platform working on a month-to-month contract.

The solution is aimed at the mobile workforce from small to medium enterprises as well as large companies, Rouhana says.

“We are able to offer synchronisation with the mobile workers allowing them to push their e-mails onto the devices such as the BlackBerry or Palm. The solution allows mobile workers to make immediate sales by accessing files that are critical to them.

“Companies are starting to understand the power of the mobile workforce. I think it's going to really start increasing in the near future.”

According to Opality, the solution works on any mobile device using any operating system, whether it's BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows or Mac. Opality Hosted Exchange offers anti-virus scanning, anti-spam, automatic secure daily backup, administration and user control panels and Microsoft Outlook Web access.

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