MWeb introduces hosted Exchange

By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor

Johannesburg, 22 May 2008

MWeb Business hopes to entice small and medium enterprises (SME) with its hosted Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 offering.

The company will lease hosted e-mail to customers at R75 per 2GB mailbox per month.

"We are using such an aggressive price point to target the SME. We want these customers to know that Microsoft Exchange is not just a product for the corporate environment," says MWeb Business product development head Herman Jansen van Rensburg.

Exchange is a rich environment that can be exploited by small business, as well as large corporate clients, he explains. "Customers in the SME segment are now mature enough to want and need the richness of the product, without having to source large capital outlays to finance an owned installation."

He says small businesses have become less focused on what technology they buy, but rather on what functionality technology can bring to business. "More clients are moving towards renting equipment from us. They want to know that when they turn on a machine, e-mail will be there."

MWeb has invested upward of R5 million in the solution, using a combination of large cluster servers and Microsoft software. "We are looking for as much scale as possible, especially in light of our hosted offerings roadmap," says Jansen van Rensburg.

The company plans to include Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint Portal Server as part of its hosted offerings over the next year. "Having these services, which can integrate and create an environment that would normally be primarily for the corporate user, will allow the SME functionality that they can afford."

Jansen van Rensburg says all the hosted solutions will run under simple per month licensing. "Keeping the entire offering as simple as possible will make it easier for the SME to take advantage of Exchange."

MWeb has also developed a management interface where those companies with IT management staff can still have functional control over adding or removing users from the Exchange Server.

Challenges

According to World Wide Worx strategy director Steven Ambrose, there is a trend towards hosted solutions among the SME market. "Most SMEs are looking at hosted e-mail solutions, primarily because it has become commoditised."

With this in mind, he says MWeb will have several challenges in targeting SMEs with its hosted Exchange solution. "Most companies are using online services such as Gmail for e-mail hosting."

Creating a service aimed at the SME and charging for it, no matter how small a price, will require a lot of convincing, he adds.

"Secondly, MWeb will have to educate possible customers on the richness of Microsoft Exchange for it to become a viable alternative."

Ambrose says his one concern is that MWeb`s price point may not scale well. "Having a single user on R75 looks attractive, but when you move to 30 or 40 users, the option becomes less attractive."

However, the option does represent a more attractive solution that implementing a self-owned Exchange environment, he adds.