What is Hosted Email?

An email hosting service is an Internet hosting service that runs email servers.

Email hosting services usually offer premium email at a cost as opposed to advertisement-supported free email or free web mail. Email hosting services thus differ from typical end-user email providers such as web mail sites. They cater mostly to demanding email users and Small and Mid Size (SME) businesses, while larger enterprises usually run their own email hosting service on their own equipment using software such as Microsoft Exchange. Email hosting providers allow for premium email services along with custom configurations and large number of accounts. In addition, exchange hosting providers manage user’s own domain name, including any email authentication scheme that the domain owner wishes to enforce in order to convey the meaning that using a specific domain name identifies and qualifies email senders.

Most email hosting providers offer advanced premium email solutions hosted on dedicated… Continue reading →

Benefits of IT Managed Services

IT Managed Services

IT or Information Technology is an integral part of all business these days. Creating and managing a fully fledged IT department is a matter of heavy expenditure and is not an easy task. Heavy expenditure, and the need of heavy infrastructure has skyrocketed the popularity of IT managed services. These IT managed services takes care of every function of IT like desktop management services, help desk, network support, and other functions.

Benefits of IT managed services

The foremost advantage of IT management services is that there is a huge dip in expenditure in terms of employees, and IT infrastructure. You only need to pay the vendor company whenever you would have problems. Outsourcing your IT function to an third party IT vendor also helps in enhanced customer satisfaction and hence more business. These professional IT managed companies provide excellent fix/break support. They also provide excellent service… Continue reading →

Google Gmail vs. hosted Microsoft Exchange

Gmail vs Exchange

More and more businesses are looking to hosted e-mail services to reduce costs and ease management, and the choice often comes down to the key component of Google Apps and a hosted version of Microsoft Exchange in the epic battle of Gmail vs Hosted Microsoft Exchange.

In this Network World Tech Debate we line up two experts to argue opposing views: Ethan Conick, chief technology officer, who says hosted Exchange wins, and Daniel Riley, vice president of services, who says enterprises will make the exchange for Google Apps.

More businesses are looking to hosted communications services to reduce costs and ease management, and the choice often comes down to Google’s Gmail (the key component of Google Apps) or hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Gmail or Exchange

For many, the decision will hinge on the features and functions. Heavy Blackberry and Microsoft Outlook users, for instance, may default to the… Continue reading →

What is a Payment Gateway?

Payment Gateway

A payment gateway, such as authorize.net, is the equivalent of a point of sale terminal found in retail stores. It can authorize payments for a myriad of businesses, including online stores and businesses and brick and mortar stores. It is a service that acts as an intermediary between the shopping cart, the merchant, and the financial institutions. This will include the buyer’s credit card issuer and the seller’s acquiring bank. The transfer of information takes place over a secure connection (SSL) and shopping carts are configured to send information in a certain format for a particular gateway.

How Does A Gateway Function?

The payment gateway or authorize.net providers will transfer information from the payment portal, which can be a website, a mobile phone, or interactive voice response service, to the bank or Front End Processor. Here is an overview of the process:

1. After entering his credit… Continue reading →

How to Achieve Business Flexibility With Cloud Economics

Cloud Computing

The beginning of Internet revolution, so called the Web 2.0 revolution, did not promise anything sophisticated like cloud hosting, to begin with, but it seemed to just have revolved over time with people realizing the almost limitless possibilities that it can offer. To name one, communication has never been so cheap, fast, and accessible with the Internet. The world has gone smaller indeed, and people can get feedback from the other side of the world at an eye’s blink. Along with these drivers of change, pressures are lurking around the corners of the walls of businesses and organizations from all industries. Responding to these changes needs to be proactive and not reactive, and the smarter organizations know how to look at the pros and cons of the available technologies for cloud economics that promise the benefits of reliability, security, and flexibility.

We are transitioning to a cloud host… Continue reading →

Insourcing Versus Outsourcing

Insourcing or Outsourcing IT

Insourcing technology services is doing work in- house instead of having outsourced IT by a contractor. That’s the book definition. But today insourcing has embraced bringing in expert IT consultants to fill in your company’s immediate need. These specialists may not be working for your company, but their expertise can be outsourced for the time being. This is where IT insourcing and IT outsourcing overlap. When an American car maker brings in Japanese experts to work on design and technology, it’s insourcing on the American side and outsourcing on the Japanese side.

Another common insourcing practice is getting the service of your own team that specializes in one area to work on a project for another department. This naturally results in savings, streamlined work, high quality assurance, and general efficiency.

We can now say that IT insourcing is IT outsourcing in reverse.

When to Insource IT

You know the… Continue reading →

Enterprise Companies Need Sharepoint Alternatives – And Don’t Even Know It

SharePoint Consulting

The other day I met with an old friend for coffee and she opened my eyes to the fact that I need Sharepoint consulting. After receiving an unexpected phone call from work, she apologetically whipped out her laptop to do something for her boss really quick. I didn’t mind- in fact, I learned something very valuable.

She was using Sharepoint, and I experienced first hand how difficult it was for her to login and get started. When I asked her about it, she gave me an exasperated look and replied “That’s not even the beginning of my problems with Sharepoint.”

She showed me then how the program continually asked for her login ID and password multiple times throughout her work session and how difficult it was to find simple documents. I asked her how she solved the system bugs, and if she had reported them to her… Continue reading →

Guide to High Availability Hosting

High Availability Hosting

What is High Availability?
High Availability hosting is a term used to describe the procedures, infrastructure, and system design to ensure a specified level of accessibility to your server. Accessibility requires both power and network connectivity as well as a functional server. If one or all of these requirements are compromised, it is said to be unavailable. This level of availability is most often specified in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Usually a set amount of credits is issued if the provider were to fail to meet the agreement. The amount of credits as well as the level of availability can vary from provider to provider. The typical metric used to describe a high availability service is in percentage of availability.

The difference between 99.9% (3 nines) and 99.99% (4 nines) is quite significant. Most business can live with a chance of a 1 minute per week… Continue reading →

History of Microsoft SQL Server

SQL Server Training

Microsoft SQL training is important to IT professionals interested in knowing how to work on the product. A history of Microsoft SQL server is also very important. Basically, the code for MS SQL came from the Sybase SQL Server, which was the first database Microsoft attempted. It competed against Sybase, IBM and Oracle. Then, Sybase, Microsoft, and Ashton-Tate worked together to create the first version of the SQL Server and ultimatley SQL server training as well. It ended up being pretty much the same as the third edition of the Sybase SQL Server. Then, the Microsoft SQL Server 4.2 was available in 1992. When the 4.21 version was available it was at the same time as Windows NT 3.1. The first version of SQL that did not include any assistance from Sybase was the Microsoft SQL Server v6.0.

When Windows NT made an appearance Sybase and Microsoft… Continue reading →

MPLS networks versus Internet VPN

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a mechanism in high-performance telecommunications networks that directs data from one network node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses, avoiding complex lookups in a routing table. The labels identify virtual links (paths) between distant nodes rather than endpoints. MPLS can encapsulate packets of various network protocols. MPLS supports a range of access technologies, including T1/E1, ATM, Frame Relay, and DSL.

MPLS is a highly scalable, protocol agnostic, data-carrying mechanism. In an MPLS network, data packets are assigned labels. Packet-forwarding decisions are made solely on the contents of this label, without the need to examine the packet itself. This allows one to create end-to-end circuits across any type of transport medium, using any protocol. The primary benefit is to eliminate dependence on a particular OSI model data link layer technology, such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, Synchronous… Continue reading →

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