New company setup on Shared Server

abakan

Hi All,

Our set up here is small business server 08 running exchange and the usual bells and whistles.

The company director has approached me this morning and told me that they have set up a new small company sewt and would like to have a domain name and email running anyway for the new account.

what do you think my best options are.

Buy a new server and set up small business server again with exchange etc or can I company share the currnet server and email?

mick.fr

abakan wrote: »

Hi All,

Our set up here is small business server 08 running exchange and the usual bells and whistles.

The company director has approached me this morning and told me that they have set up a new small company sewt and would like to have a domain name and email running anyway for the new account.

what do you think my best options are.

Buy a new server and set up small business server again with exchange etc or can I company share the currnet server and email?

Personally I would recommend to opt for Microsoft online services.
You can have your very own domain name redirected to their hosted solutions which includes Exchange Mailboxes, SharePoint, Anti Spam etc...
Cheaper, no overhead, no assetsand far more reliable than a single MX server hosted in an office with a Eircom DSL line... Cloud computing...

Make sure you register yourself as a Microsoft partner (Free), so you can claim other benefits. This is a recurring service, you get paid regularly.
You need to sell 5 licenses minimum though I believe.

mickoneill30

abakan wrote: »

what do you think my best options are.

There are the best options and there are what your director wants to pay for. I'd say those two won't match. It's possible to have two domains have their email received on the one Exchange server. Microsoft have plenty of articles on that.

What you need to do is sit down and examine

1: Cost of a new server if you went that route.
2: Number of users if you put them all on one server or two servers. How will this affect your backups. Do you need more Exchange licenses? Are you supporting both companies? If not I'd be getting a second server.
3: Security. If the two companies have nothing to do with each other I wouldn't put their data on a shared server. In your case they probably do though. There's also security about putting your information with a cloud computing providor.
4: I've no experience with cloud computing but I'd want an iron clad contract with SLAs for downtime, backups, length of time for restores, security of data, redundant links with ISPs.

If you go to your director and say you can put the new users on the existing server for little cost, guess what he's going to say

You'll need to make put all the costs for the options and the risks and let him decide. If you put all your users on one server and the server dies guess who he'll be looking at. It's exactly the same if you put all your data on the internet and you have a problem with your ISP or your router.

abakan

Hi guys, and thanks for those reply, deffo food for thought there.

I like the idea of going down the Microsoft live route, nice and easy, I think at the most the new company will have 5 users anyway. so I think it a good option but.... I want to keep myself in a job so Ill prob keep it in house for the time being anyway. Set up the new company and the same or a new server and let them work away. Ive yet to find out about licences but thats all in good time.