Creating Office365 or Google Apps type system internally
We have the following needs and looking for possible solutions: 1) More and more users are working from more than one computer (in office and out) and want access to their email, calendar (personal and shared ones), tasks, certain documents. They want to be able to access these whether they are on the Local LAN or remote from anywhere on the internet. 2) They want to be able to share files with specific internal and external users. Mainly to avoid emailing 10MB ro 30MB files around and to share with external users so multiple people could view or update as needed from internal and external locations. 3) Being able to collaborate would be nice, but not a high priority. 4) They want to be able to access certain files from anywhere as well. Here is what we are doing now: For general remote usage our users use LogMeIn to control their office computer. But this is not the solution, but helpful for support or some specialized app just on that one computer and they want to access from remote. Our current email is using Outlook 2007+ via POP3 at web hosting. They have web mail, but it sucks. I personally would love them to be using a 100% robust and highly searchable web mail solution. For sharing large files we have several folks using Google Docs and several using DropBox and several using YouSendIt... nothing standard. Google Docs is the closest to what we need based on the tests so far. In regards to accessing files from anywhere... the three I mentioned above all allowed it, but Google Docs was liked the most. Now we know there are cloud based solutions or software as a service like Google Apps or Office365 that appear to both be good solutions. HOWEVER the cost is what will get us here. We are a Church 501(c)(3). We do not qualify with Google Apps because we are a church for the free Google Apps for Non Profits. So the paid version I believe is $50 a year per user and we currently have 50 users. So we would be looking at $2500 per year. I don't know what Office 365 pricing per user per year is for a 501(c)(3), but from what I can tell it will be more expensive than Google Apps. Either way these are two viable products. NOW... let's say the church says they do not want to spend $2500 to X amount PER year for a cloud based service, but want us to do this in house. Since we get charity pricing with Microsoft that is the route we would take. What I am looking for is some input on achieving similar features with an in house solution as the core Google Apps and Office 365 offerings. I believe it would involve our existing Windows 2008r2 domain, a new Exchange 2010 server, and probably Sharepoint. The downside is I would not have near the redundancy as the cloud based solutions and our internet link could be stressed depending on how many external users are trying to access OWA and Sharepoint. Anyway... just looking for some feedback and doing this internally and what is involved in exposing OWA and Sharepoint so we can achieve all 4 needs listed above. Thanks, Greg
June 30th, 2011 2:13pm

Exchange Servers/CALs Prices Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition $699 US Exchange Server 2010 Standard CAL $67 US ----------Refer to <Exchange: Pricing> With Exchange 2010, “Direct File Access” would be the closest feature that I can think about “access certain files from anywhere as well” As I know, there’s no feature that can meet your second need in the exchange 2010 natively. For the cost of SharePoint product, please call Hotline if you are a partner. If not, please contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for further assistance [US, outside of US] Or, you can also consider Windows SBS 2011 It should meet your demand on content sharing and e-mail remote accessing Licenses U.S. Price* Description Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard: Available Today! $1096 Includes Small Business Server 2011 Standard Edition. Price also includes 5-pack of Small Business Server 2011 CAL Suite (User or Device, chosen after purchase) Windows Small Business Server 2011 CAL Suite Users or Devices 5-pack $361 Five additional SBS 2011 CALs (User or Device, chosen at time of purchase) for accessing a SBS network ----------Refer to <SBS: Pricing> Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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July 1st, 2011 2:20am

James, Thanks for the reply... sorry if my post led to some confusion... wasn't looking for pricing. We get Microsoft charity pricing so I know what the basic costs of the software. I am basically looking for input on achieving the same time of features by doing this in house. See below: What I am looking for is some input on achieving similar features with an in house solution as the core Google Apps and Office 365 offerings. I believe it would involve our existing Windows 2008r2 domain, a new Exchange 2010 server, and probably Sharepoint. The downside is I would not have near the redundancy as the cloud based solutions and our internet link could be stressed depending on how many external users are trying to access OWA and Sharepoint. Anyway... just looking for some feedback and doing this internally and what is involved in exposing OWA and Sharepoint so we can achieve all 4 needs listed above.
July 1st, 2011 10:53am

1. You can get all the normal features and uses you have mentioned above with the products that you have mentioned. So it's possible to do this in house. As this is an exch forum, you are more likey to get exch feedback than Sharepoint. For SP post in the SP forum - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint2010 2. To access email, calendar etc you can use OWA or Outlook Anywhere. Points 2/3/4 are pretty much around SP. Although you can access file via OWA (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124232.aspx) SP would probably be a better option. 3. For redundancy you could look into Virtualising your servers. As you're a charity i'm sure you will get good discounts on all Microsoft Products. What you can do then is have multiple servers for exch which would help you provide HA/fault tolerance for some exch roles/services. 4. To get you started I'd recommend that you readt Technet and understand some componets like OWA & OA. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998629.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123741.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/exchange2010/thread/4f795faf-ae6a-407f-933e-cb9886d2cc52 5. You may also want to consider publishing OWA using a proxy - http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/publishing-outlook-web-access-microsoft-forefront-tmg.html -Similar for exch 2010Sukh
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July 1st, 2011 6:03pm

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