Is Email Dying?

By James Bond, Apptix Vice President of Product & Software Development

I had the opportunity to participate in a Black Enterprise Magazine piece around the idea that email is "dying." The article ran in the magazine's April 2010 issue and Sonya Donaldson, the writer, did an excellent job covering the many angles of the latest variance of this reoccurring topic.

So IS email dying, you ask? No!

Every so many technology cycles--especially when a "new" messaging platform such as SMS, Twitter, or Facebook gains in popularity--the "death of email boogeyman" comes out in force. But the cold hard fact is this: no matter how shiny the bells and whistles of the latest "email killer," email is the base platform for corporate communication.

That's not to say that email is static - it's certainly not. Is email perfect? Not if you read CRN’s Ed Moltzen's recent weigh in, in which he stated that email is broken and offered some tips on how to fix it.

Email is evolving--and for the better. Ed will be happy to know that Microsoft Outlook 2010 addresses many of his problems, especially the issue of "threading" conversations. (And you'll be happy to know that we will be fully supporting Outlook 2010 for our Apptix and MailStreet customers within the next few weeks.)

The rising market for Unified Communications only enhances email's hold within the corporate world. With UC, your email client will become a communications hub, melding disparate communications and collaboration technologies. (Apptix’s hosted UC service is launching later this year.)

The ease with which new services can snap into--and enhance--Exchange certainly keeps the Grim Reaper from email's doorway. For example, we constantly enhance and add services--such as email encryption or archiving and compliance--to help our customers meet the many "alphabet soup" regulatory requirements (think FINRA, SOX, HIPAA, and so on). When was the last time you were able to easily, affordably, and quickly plug-in an enhancement for your onsite business phone system?

So the answer is--and will be for the foreseeable future (at least until we developed telepathy or something similar)--NO, email is not dead. It may be changing to better suit its user base, but it is not dead. Nor will it be anytime soon.

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Hosted vs. In-House: It's Apples to Oranges

By Mike Warstler, Apptix IT Manager

When it comes to hosted services and the associated costs, I frequently hear business owners utter the same line: “Why should I pay to host it when I can buy a server for a couple of thousand dollars and run it myself in-house?”

I immediately think of apples, oranges and why we cannot compare the two.

Then I picture their server locked away in some poorly ventilated coat closet with an extension cord sneaking out from under the door and running down the hallway. Being an IT guy, I have nightmares about these scenarios and I’m sure if your IT guy knew that you were thinking about bringing a highly complex service like Exchange in-house he’d develop terminal insomnia.

Most business owners simply don’t know what it takes to run an environment worthy of Apptix’s 100 percent service level agreement (SLA). Before you run off to your friendly neighborhood IT consultant/integrator to buy thousands of dollars worth of beige boxes, here are some things you want to think about before bringing Exchange in house.

• - Microsoft Exchange is only one part of your email solution. Additional items needed include service contracts, backup drives and software,mobility solution (BlackBerry Enterprise Server, ActiveSync, Goodlink, etc.), monitoring, anti-virus/anti-spam, disaster recovery and redundancy. Just “buying the box” isn’t enough - you will need most, if not all, of the above to make your in-house meet the minimum requirements of a decent Exchange environment.

• - Ensure that you have a four-hour onsite warranty on your equipment. If you have a hardware problem you’ll want it fixed ASAP. Keep in mind, this needs to be bought separately in most cases - add a few more dollars to the budget.

• - If you have a contractor or consultant setting up the server you’ll want to make sure that they not only provide 24/7/365 support but also monitoring. You don’t want them to just react to problems with your network and services - you want them to stop outages before they even occur.

• - You’ll want to make sure that you perform complete data backups (EVERY NIGHT) and subscribe to an offsite storage service to securely store said backups. Backing up onsite is great, but tape isn’t going to save you from a five-alarm building fire.

• - You’ll need an uninterruptable power supply (UPS to carry the load in the event of a short power outage). In the event of an extended power outage you’ll want to configure it to perform a graceful shutdown so the server doesn’t just suddenly crash. Again, this costs an additional fee and will probably require a power management consultant for setup.

• - Oh, and just because you bought the software doesn’t mean you own it - get ready to pay licensing fees for everything, from Microsoft Exchange to anti-virus/anti-spam to your backup software and even for Microsoft Outlook. You’ll need to pay per seat as well.

• - A coat closet is not a server room - cooling is vital. Make sure that you have adequate cooling and/or airflow. I did not exaggerate when I said that seeing people put servers into a hot closet and shut the door makes me die a little inside.

• - Oh you want to access Exchange remotely? Well then, you’ll want to have a VPN configured or change your firewall to all inbound Outlook Web Access (OWA) or RPC over HTTPS (Outlook Anywhere) protocols--if you don’t know what these are you really shouldn’t be hosting your own Exchange service.

• - Another fact to remember is that you probably will not have any redundancy in-house (you just bought one server, remember?). But for your Internet connection, you may want to get a second small DSL connection in the event that your primary ISP goes down. Next, what if your Exchange server goes down, do you have clustered servers for immediate failover and protection of your data--a hosted provider does.

• - Learn to love the second Tuesday of each month - Patch Tuesday. With only one Exchange server you won’t be able to test your patches prior to taking them live, but in most cases it’s better to patch than to not patch. Make sure you set up a patch schedule that will apply emergency out-of-band patches. Periodic defragmentation of the drives is also a good idea.

• - When it comes to disaster recovery...good luck, I guess. Most likely you’ll have to go to your latest backup and rebuild from scratch - believe me, this is not fun. Hosted Exchange providers have extensive real-time backups (not just one per day), clustered servers for immediate failover, additional copies of databases in case of data corruption, redundant Internet providers, and in some cases geo-redundant data centers: “never having to worry about your services availability or data loss - priceless”

That’s almost a dozen bullets and an (initial) investment of thousands of dollars and your Exchange environment still will not match up to Apptix’s. Or you could just bite the bullet and take your services to the Apptix cloud for a small monthly subscription fee. Worried about reliability or redundancy? All of Apptix’s datacenters are state-of-the-art and ultra-secure, featuring clustered servers, redundant SANs, multiple Internet carriers, UPSs and generators with days of fuel onsite.

We take care of all of the licensing, backups and testing of patches for you - if a patch isn’t working properly, it’s not going to affect you because we won’t push it live. In the event that your Internet connection at the office goes down, no problem - you can simply go home and keep working because we’re still online and can provide service wherever you can get Internet access.

Look at it this way - for what it costs to just maintain an in-house Exchange environment (not even considering the start-up costs and replacement every 3-5 years), Apptix provides the entire solution.

Do you want to shell out thousand of bucks on some boxes or just flip a switch and have your email work?

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iPhone Operating System (iOS4.0.1) Software Update Fixes Exchange Sync Issues

by Craig McLemore, Apptix Knowledge Manager

Apple mobile device users running the recently released iOS 4 have been experiencing a variety of syncing problems with Exchange ActiveSync – mail, contacts, and calendars do not sync or sync very slowly. These issues have been impacting the iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone 3G and 3Gs.

On July 15, 2010, Apple released an updated to iOS4 (iOS 4.0.1) to address the algorithm used to display the signal strength of iPhone devices running iOS4 as part of Apple's on-going efforts to deal with "Antenna-gate."

More importantly to Exchange users, the iOS4.0.1 update also fixes the iPhone Exchange ActiveSync issue.

Unfortunately, as of July 26, only five percent (5%) of all iOS4 users had upgraded to the new iOS4.0.1 version. It is especially critical for all of our Apptix and MailStreet customers to perform this upgrade to ensure that your iOS4 device is properly syncing with Exchange so that other users of Apptix hosted services are not adversely impacted by this issue.

You may check the version of your Operating System on iPhone iOS4 devices by selecting Settings > General > About > Version. If you do not see version 4.0.1 as your current OS version, connect to iTunes in order to access, download, and install the latest iOS4 update.

If you or your users are still having issues with your Apple device and Apptix Exchange service after the upgrade, please contact MailStreet or Apptix Customer Support for assistance.

iTunes 9.2.1 Update
Not to be left out of all the point release fun, Apple has just pushed out iTunes 9.2.1. Hit software update or head on over to Apple’s iTunes download page to grab it. iTunes 9.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes, including:
- Disables older versions of some incompatible third-party plug-ins
- Addresses minor issues with dragging and dropping items
- Addresses a performance issue when first syncing to some devices with iOS4

According to the update, the new version disables older versions of incompatible third-party plug-ins, addresses minor issues, with dragging and dropping items, addresses a performance issue when doing a first sync to some devices, addresses an issue upgrading to iOS 4 on an iPhone or iPod touch with encrypted backups, and fixes some stability and performance issues.

The new features and improvements include syncing with iPhone 4, synchronization and reading books on iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1, organizing and syncing PDF documents as books for reading in iBooks 1.1, organizing apps on your iOS 4 home screens using iTunes, faster backups while syncing iPhone and iPod touch with iOS 4, and album artwork improvements to make artwork appear more quickly when exploring the library.

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What Cloud Services Will You Adopt?

IT research and consulting firm Gartner forecast last week that worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue within the enterprise application software market in 2010 will exceed $8.5 billion. This is an increase of 14.1% from 2009’s revenue of $7.5 billion. Gartner further projects that SaaS revenue in 2014 will account for 16% of the total market versus just over 10% in 2009.

Of course, the economy has been a huge factor in the adoption of cloud-based applications and services (“Gartner defines SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers,” and estimates that 75% of current SaaS offerings are cloud services). But coupled with the economy is the enhanced “security, response time, and service availability” of today’s SaaS offerings that address the needs and requirements of business.

Gartner identified three key market segments for SaaS growth in the years ahead:

- Content, Communications, and Collaboration – this includes hosted email, team collaboration and enterprise content management services such as SharePoint, and Web conferencing
- CRM – such as salesforce.com or Microsoft’s Dynamics
- Project and Portfolio Management

Tell us what you think... Is Gartner right that cloud-based applications and services will continue to see double digit growth over the next several years? What are the advantages or concerns you have regarding SaaS or the cloud?

Take this quick survey and tell us what cloud-based services your company currently uses or is exploring getting from the cloud. We’ll share the results so you can learn your peers’ strategic perspective of the cloud.

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Hosted SharePoint - Are You Secure?

By Sheldon Smith, Apptix SharePoint Product Manager

Amidst all of the buzz around cloud computing, there are some serious and very real concerns about user security when accessing applications or data in the cloud. An application that could potentially be a prime target for hackers or cybercriminals is a collaboration application like SharePoint, particularly if it houses sensitive customer or employee data.

Fortunately, it's relatively simple to make your SharePoint site more secure...so how can you do it?

1. SSL. Protect your site with SSL (Secure Socket Layer). It's quite easy to add an SSL certificate to a SharePoint site, which will encrypt the network traffic (including the login credentials) as they pass through the Internet. Remember to redirect non-secure HTTP traffic to the secure HTTPS port or URL or you will end up with a wide open unsecured door.

2. Login! Avoid allowing anonymous users access to your SharePoint sites. Enforce a login requirement so you always know who is accessing your data (and so that you'll have a record of who was inside in case a leak does occur). Use Active Directory as part of your login setup. It seems obvious, but it's often overlooked - since SharePoint is a Microsoft product, it ties in with your existing Active Directory and allows you to have use a single login ID for SharePoint and possibly Exchange and/or your desktop computer that uses Active Directory.

3. Roles. Define roles within SharePoint, or use the default roles, to clearly define what read, write, edit, change permissions each user has. Using Roles and Groups is much easier than defining permissions for each individual user but you can do either if you wish.

4. Keep Your Site Healthy. Again, this should be a no-brainer - add an anti-virus solution to your SharePoint site. This will help prevent the site itself from being infected and, should a virus still take root, you'll be warned about it and be able to track down potentially infected users or shut down the site before anyone else is affected.

That's really all there is to keeping your data safer in the cloud. All of it is self-explanatory, and the better providers will actually offer these protections to you as part of your service. These SharePoint security best practices apply to both an in-house solution or through your favorite hosted provider. And remember, a hacker only needs to correctly guess one way into your network to compromise your data, so you must secure your systems correctly all the time and every time.

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SharePoint Meets the Cloud

By Sheldon Smith, Apptix Product Manager

SharePoint is a fantastic collaboration tool, but to get the most out of the solution, a great deal of customization is required. For many businesses, building a SharePoint site into a company or customer information portal means:

A) Investing hundreds of man-hours and purchasing dedicated IT infrastructure, or;

B) Spending upwards of $7,000 to purchase SharePoint Web Parts – a pre-built set of “components” that allow for the quick customization of SharePoint sites to fulfill a variety of purposes.

But what if your company could get all the benefits and versatility of SharePoint Web Parts without the staggering up-front cost or the staff/infrastructure requirements? Maybe you should look to the cloud for your answer…

Apptix has partnered with Bamboo Solutions to provide Bamboo’s SharePoint Web Parts with an Apptix hosted SharePoint site. This means that your company doesn’t need to hire additional IT staff, buy more servers or take out a bank loan just to get the most out of your SharePoint site.

The Apptix/Bamboo hosted Web Parts offering is only $20 per month, substantially less than the $7,000 (plus staff and infrastructure) needed to buy Web Parts on your own. And not only is it cheaper, it’s also backed by one of the best names in the SharePoint industry – Bamboo Solutions. They’re proven leaders in providing customized and flexible SharePoint-based solutions, and we’re very pleased to be able to partner with them for this endeavor.

So what do you get with the Bamboo solution hosted by Apptix?

- Quick and easy integration with Microsoft Exchange for better calendaring

- Data validation to ensure that all information on a SharePoint site keeps the same look and feel

- Enhanced security allowing you to close off certain data views to specific users or user levels

- Easy site templates allowing you to build sites to track sales flow processes, lead flows, customer base maps and more

So what do you need to do to gain SharePoint Web Parts in the cloud? Just check out our product page and go from there!

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Apple Post Directions to fix iOS 4 Exchange Sync Problems

by Apptix Knowledge Base Team

Users of the new Apple iOS 4 are encountering syncing problems with problems with Exchange ActiveSync mail, contacts, and calendars. Following are directions Apple has posted to fix this issue.

According to the Apple post, Symptoms include:

Immediately after updating to iOS 4, some users may notice that Exchange ActiveSync Mail, Contacts, or Calendars do not sync, or sync very slowly. In addition, some Exchange Server administrators may notice their servers running slowly.

The Products impacted by this issue are: iPod Touch, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS.

The Resolution:

To work around this issue, users should install a configuration profile from Apple that increases the amount of time the iOS 4 device will wait for the Exchange Server to respond to its sync requests. For best results, the profile should be installed on as many iOS 4 devices at your company as possible.

To install the profile:

1. Use Safari on your iOS 4 device to download the configuration profile. It may be easiest to read this article with your iPhone or iPod touch and tap the download link there, but you may also email the attachment to another email account on your iOS 4 device, and tap the attachment to open it.
2. Tap Install to install the profile, and enter your passcode if prompted.
3. A warning message will appear because the profile is not signed. Tap Install Now.
4. Tap Done to complete the installation, then power off your device and power it back on.
5. Wait for your Exchange data to finish syncing.

After installation, the profile will be listed under Settings > General > Profile.

If you are still having issues with your Apple device and Apptix Exchange service after completing these steps, please contact Apptix Customer Support for assistance.

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