12 Questions to ask an Exchange hosting provider

Points you need to cover before signing up with any hosted Exchange provider.

In 2000, Intermedia became the world's first company to launch an on-demand hosted Microsoft Exchange service designed specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. The goal – just as today – was to offer smaller organizations the same enterprise-strength email, collaboration and file-sharing enjoyed by Fortune 500 companies.

Intermedia has more experience in Exchange hosting for SMBs than any other company in the world. This is why we have created this checklist of '12 questions you should ask an Exchange hosting provider'. We hope it is useful as you evaluate your options for outsourcing Exchange to specialists.

FAQs

If you have any questions, please feel free to talk with our Exchange experts at 1-800-379-7729.

How long have you been in business and how long have you been hosting Microsoft Exchange?
As a customer you should look at how long service providers have been in business, as it gives a good idea of the maturity and stability of the company. You should also note that Microsoft Exchange is a very complex piece of software with many IT management challenges. Long experience - living and breathing Exchange on a daily basis - counts for a great deal.
Intermedia has been in business since 1995 and hosting Microsoft Exchange since 2000. Unlike many competitors, who say they've been around more than ten years, playing on a previous or parent company's heritage, or even an older company they acquired, we are proud to say we celebrated our tenth birthday last year.

Many hosting companies also make it appear they have been hosting Exchange for a long time when it is in fact not true. We have been hosting Exchange for six years, and that experience shines through in our range of products, along with our capabilities and knowledge.
Are you stable, profitable and debt-free?
When it comes to choosing a hosting company, look to check off all three of these boxes, if possible. It isn't a case of "two out of three ain't bad", as Microsoft Exchange has truly become a mission-critical application. Losing your company email, contacts and calendars due to an issue with your hosting company would be a very grave business issue.
A number of companies in the hosting world have high debt and may have overextended themselves, putting their companies and – more importantly for you – their customers' data at risk. Intermedia is stable, profitable and debt free.
Are there multiple points of redundancy across your servers, storage, power, cooling, Internet connectivity and other infrastructure?
For mission-critical applications, uptime is key. Most hosted Exchange companies do have redundancy across their infrastructure, but some of them become very vague when asked for precise details of their datacenter and Exchange environment. Be sure to get satisfactory answers on all the points above.
Intermedia's fiber-optic network and extensive peering arrangements, offers rapid transmission with built-in redundancy. Our datacenters also offer a state-of-the-art environment with raised floors, climate control, fire-suppression system, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and standby power generators. This allows for full redundancy in every rack/cage. Our advanced storage area network (SAN) offers advanced failover capabilities, ensuring no downtime for you.
What size clients do you serve?
Some companies will pretend that the needs of businesses of all sizes are the same, but those who specialize in larger solutions don't give priority to smaller companies and their needs.
We know that you, as a small or mid-size business, want a supplier that understands your needs and requirements. Intermedia focuses exclusively on SMBs – companies as small as three users and up. We are the largest US provider of hosted Exchange services to this market.
What is your relationship with Microsoft?
Ask your supplier about their Microsoft certification, which shows their commitment to the Exchange product. To legally sell Exchange as a hosted service, they must have a signed service provider licensing agreement (SPLA) with Microsoft. You should certainly not consider any provider without this agreement.
Intermedia is a Microsoft Certified Partner, so provides you with the highest levels of technical expertise and hands-on skills. We are also a member of Microsoft's Exchange Technology Adoption Program (TAP), a small group of Microsoft's closest partners which gets an early view of upcoming releases.
What facilities do you own and run?
Some hosting companies lease or even sub-lease the hardware they use to host Exchange, which means that the responsibility and control of equipment is not 100% their own. This may or may not be acceptable to you - but it does lessen the accountability if there is a problem with your Exchange service. "There's nothing we can do about it" is most likely not what you will want to hear.
Intermedia owns and manages its entire Exchange environment, which includes all the servers, storage and software. Our server cages in our main California datacenter are similar in size to Google's California presence.
How many engineers and support people work for your company?
Maintaining and supporting an Exchange environment 24x7 requires manpower and expertise. This is very expensive and many smaller Exchange hosting companies - even with bold "guaranteed uptime" claims and the best intentions - simply cannot in practice live up to their support promises. A number of these smaller companies offer very good support, but if several issues emerge simultaneously, their small crew of support engineers is simply overwhelmed with tasks - meaning downtime for you.
As the number one US Exchange hosting company for SMBs, Intermedia has a large team of experienced and qualified systems administrators and engineers dedicated to supporting our small and midsize business customers around the clock.
Do you have any single points of failure?
A question that is often overlooked by customers and not talked about by service providers is whether there are any single points of failure. We know that even small problems can bring down a multi-million dollar system if each piece isn't configured in a redundant fashion.
All Intermedia's servers have built-in redundancy and the data center has redundant power and cooling. In addition, all major systems (such as Exchange servers) are configured with back-ups that can failover in an emergency.
What is your uptime guarantee?
This is a thorny issue, as many companies promote figures that have no basis in reality and little chance of being objectively measured. Guarantees range from 99.5%, which is the absolute minimum you should expect, up to bogus promises of "100%" availability. You should look for an SLA-backed promise of at least 99.99% uptime at the application level, with a higher figure for infrastructure. And make sure that there are financial penalties if the provider fails to meet that SLA-defined level.
Through its clustered, SAN-based infrastructure, Intermedia offers a 99.99% application-level uptime guarantee, with a 99.999% guarantee at the infrastructure level. We will also refund money to you if you suffer more downtime than is agreed in your SLA.
In which datacenter will your server be located and what facilities does it offer?
This is another question many providers will duck. Some hosting companies give only vague details about their datacenter, either in their company literature or when you talk to a member of the sales team.
Make sure you check when the datacenter was built, as some Exchange hosting companies are in datacenters built in the 1990s, right at the beginning of the mainstream Internet era. This means they have less advanced power, connectivity and cooling.

Also make sure that the datacenter has a history of continued uptime. For example, some Florida-based Exchange hosting companies suffered significant downtime at several points during 2005 due to the disruption of electricity supplies in that state.

Intermedia's main datacenter is a 2003 Terremark facility in Silicon Valley with the absolute latest in design, technology and infrastructure. This provides an unbeatable 99.999% guaranteed availability.
Will I get a control panel for both administrators and end users?
Or, to rephrase, how much effort will my hosted Exchange server really require? As a customer, you want to be in control of your Exchange server, but without the tedious administration or the frequent calls from your own staff about email issues. With some providers you have to submit all change requests manually and wait for a manual response, which could leave you waiting for hours or possibly days to make simple changes to your Exchange setup.
Exchange hosts that do have online control for self-service changes will often only provide one control panel, which is technically-focused for administrators. This may well be fine for your needs. But it also puts a great deal of support back onto your plate, as end users must submit even the most straightforward change requests to you – simple things, like altering their display name.

Intermedia solves these issues with two control panels: the HostPilot control panel for administrators and the MyMailboxManager control panel, which allows users to make their own basic changes and relieves the IT department of simple tasks. Note also that administrators can customize the level of access that end users get via MyMailboxManager.
How knowledgeable is the support team?
You have probably experienced that sinking feeling when you phone a support line and you become aware that the people you're talking to know less about the service or application than you. This is because some service providers outsource their support desks or are based in areas of the country with few Exchange specialists in the local workforce.
With business-critical services like hosted Exchange, it is essential the support team can help you right away. That's why the first time you contact Intermedia, no matter what time it is, 24x7, you will get the information you need. All of the members in our support team – including our first-level support – are highly trained and Microsoft-certified, unlike many of our competitors where level-1 support simply reads from a script.

Our operations are based in Silicon Valley and in New York City, and no support is outsourced. We have a razor-like focus on hiring only the most experienced and knowledgeable support staff. In fact, you will find that our level-1 support team has expertise that is equivalent to many other companies' level-3 supervisors.