I am currently evaluating possible upgrades for my company, a small 6-person e-commerce business. As part of the upgrade I’m looking at replacing our 10-year old domain controller with a new one running Small Business Server for its integrated suite; it seems to be more suited to what we need as a small company. The server itself I can think of just fine. Sharepoint is a nice benefit. The trouble is with Exchange.
Our current email situation is like this: We’re hosting a generic, dirt cheap POP/SMTP account with a service provider. As part of it we get an email address in the form of name@ourcompany.com, and web access via mail.ourcompany.com (It’s redirected, we don’t host the web-based system). However it’s only the most basic of email features.
I haven’t dealt much with evaluating Exchange for a business; I’ve used Exchange that was already in place, so I’m basically looking for compelling reasons why it would be better for us to use internally-hosted Exchange, instead of this cheap solution we’re using now. We email partners and vendors, and of course use it for internal communication, and also we send each other files via email (something I want to get away from), but I’m specifically looking for business benefits to using Exchange and SBS, as I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.