I have been using Microsoft Exchange for about 4 years now. Prior to my forced migration a series of protocols including POP3 and IMAP controlled my life. These protocols where my communication method with the world and at the time did exactly what they were supposed to, send and receive email. It was not until my forced migration to Microsoft Exchange that I realized how one product could organize my daily activities and help me move to the next level. If you asked me today to go back to “standard” email I would be extremely disappointed if not angry!<

With my recent upgrade to Outlook 2007 which is powered by our corporate Exchange Servers I am able to communicate, organize, schedule, manage tasks, and have news delivered all from a central location. I use almost every feature in Outlook 2007 to the extreme as every time I develop new habits around this application I seem to gain new insight and a new level of productivity. I have also tied all this functionality into my Blackberry making contacts, calendar events, tasks, and email available to me when I am not in the office.

As we all know email in business is a requirement these days, but having the ability to organize tasks based on incoming outgoing emails is one of my favorite features of Microsoft Exchange. With incoming and outgoing emails I have the ability to drag and drop to my calendar, schedule meetings, follow ups, tasks, and categorize them for future. This task alone allows me to operate a clean inbox without the fear of forgetting important action items that need my attention! 4 years ago I had a growing inbox of 100’s on emails that needed my attention and once or twice a day I would scroll through it to see if something needed attention. This out of control type of email management is now a thing of the past and has been replaced by a handy popup reminder or “special” ring tone on my Blackberry to remind me of specific and key events in my life. I no longer miss birthdays, anniversaries, meetings, calls, or important tasks and at the start of each day I can see what items need my attention.

My address book and contact list stores important contacts for me and even allows me to drag and drop emails and extracts the information for me. As my address book grows it automatically syncs with the Blackberry making these contacts available to me while I am not in the office. As these are stored on the centralized Exchange Server, I never have to reprogram a cell phone again! There was a time in my life that new cell phones meant a “weekend” of data transfer as I manually entered phone numbers and contacts from the old phone to the new phone.

I am news junkie and love RSS feeds full of blog posts, news, and industry related articles. With the recent release of Outlook 2007 I now have the ability to move my RSS obsession from my former web based application directly into Outlook! At the time of writing I am not sure this has increased my overall productivity or caused me distractions, but it’s very nice to see up to the minute industry related news without having to view it online! I am currently subscribed to right around 100 RSS feeds and enjoy the ability to stay “in the know”.

My last and favorite feature of Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Exchange is task management. The tasks are simple to use and allow me to manage the 20-30 projects from a single point. I am able to assign internal projects to fellow employees, vendors, and peers and be updated. They key to making this a success was getting everyone involved and using this feature. Being the “Task Master” is useless if the people you are working with don’t use it and update it. The results will be a very boring and not so interactive “to do list”. With everyone involved the simple Task Management feature in Outlook 2007 allows me to receive updates, assign tasks, and keep projects organized.

My Computer is dead – but I didn’t miss a step!
Over the last 4 years, I have had 3 major computer crashes that have resulted in new laptops or operating system reinstalls. One of the indirect features I was surprisingly happy about after my first crash was that all of my email, files, and important contacts remained the same as I left them. I was able to connect back to the Exchange server with my new system and immediately have access to every piece of important information I left in Outlook! Losing this information would have been a disaster and today when I have a computer problem, I have no worries about data loss. I do get an occasional comment from our Exchange Administrators about the size of my mailbox, but until this escalates to a formal complaint I will continue to abuse my privileges!

About FastServers.Net Microsoft Exchange Offering
Microsoft Exchange Hosting is a new product that we launched at the end of May! This product was developed so that any organization could easily deploy and utilize enterprise level email without the need of employing an Exchange Administrator. Don’t mistake this product offering as the standard “$9.95 per month Hosted Exchange” as the offering includes your own fully managed dedicated server. FastServers.Net spent a great deal of time understanding the importance of uptime and easy to use enterprise level email. The new solution that is available offers a complete solution hosted on your own dedicated server hardware. As a solution provider we evaluated many configurations and spent over 9 months developing a platform that is secure, reliable, and most importantly easy to use. In the end it’s the same product we would buy if we wanted to outsource our Exchange Hosting! You can find many “lower” cost options available on the market but many will house you in a shared environment that can have stability and security issues.

The official press release for this offering is as follows: http://www.fastservers.net/about-contact/article.php?id=44

To see pricing for Exchange Hosting:
1 to 50 Users
51 to 100 Users
101 to 250 Users

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