Remote Support : TeamViewer
TeamViewer is a compact module that runs on your computer and allows EVOK technical services to provide remote technical assistance
Despite the growing popularity in Switzerland of instant messaging applications and other messaging alternatives such as Salesforce Chatter and Slack, e-mail remains the preferred mode of communication. Cloud hosting has not only kept e-mail relevant, it has also facilitated the development of professional hosted messaging solutions tailored to yourhosting needs and budget.
In this blog post, we'll look at the differences between the various email hosting services. Then, we'll suggest the best options to consider for your business.
Simply put, a hosted e-mail service provides you with server space to store your e-mails, and access to the domain name of your choice. When it comes to e-mailhosting, Swiss companies can choose between 3 types:
Self-hosting means storing e-mails on your own personal server.
This gives companies greater control, but is difficult to set up and maintain. To host e-mail on-site, a company needs a few basic components, including a mail transfer agent, a mail delivery agent and an IMAP and/or POP3 server. Self-hosting is also expensive. In addition to requiring a significant initial investment, self-hosted servers require administrators to perform routine maintenance. As a company grows, it will also need to purchase additional dedicated servers to scale and meet its growing needs for a hosted e-mail solution . Self-hosting is more popular among businesses, which have the resources to manage and maintain multiple mail servers.
Shared hosting refers to the bundling of website and e-mail hosting.
This option is convenient for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as the hosting provider is responsible for all server maintenance, administration, management and support. Shared hosting is also affordable. Many providers include the cost of e-mail hosting in their web hosting subscription fees.
Third-party hosting is similar to shared hosting, except that it does not include web hosting. With third-party hosting, e-mail hosting providers essentially rent their servers to companies.
This type of business e-mail service is popular for its affordability. There are many free hosted e-mailservices on the market, such as Zoho Mail and Yandex. However, these free hosting services are usually heavily laden with advertising and don't offer the extensive functionality of a paid service. Paid hosting services often come with robust feature sets, including IMAP/POP3, spam prevention, anti-virus software, unlimited aliases, online storage, e-mail backup and more. Email hosting providers also manage their own servers, including maintenance and administration, so their customers can concentrate on their core business.
There are several key factors to consider when comparing email hosting providers and services, starting with corporate security. Cyber security breaches are a reality that shared, third-party and self-hosting providers have to contend with.
However, SMEs have nothing to fear, as many business messaging services come with built-in security features, such as malware scanning and encryption. These features also offer powerful privacy protection, for added peace of mind. Any SME considering shared hosting should also invest in a service incorporating anti-phishing tools, anti-virus software and firewall protection.
Other key features and qualities companies should look for in a mail hosting provider include MAP/POP3, spam filters, custom domains, mailbox storage and 24/7 support. That's why you should consider using Microsoft Exchange.
Microsoft Exchange is a 100% IMAP-enabled email server that offers several key qualities you should look for in a provider, including anti-malware and anti-spam filters, 99.9% uptime guarantee, disaster recovery capability, Office 365 integration, offline access, 24/7 Support and EDiscovery features.
Microsoft Exchange is a mail server that runs on Windows Server operating systems. Exchange works with Web-based e-mail clients like Microsoft Outlook, which can connect to and manage e-mail from a variety of sources. In fact, Outlook is really optimized for Exchange and works better than when you use an Exchange account.
Most commonly used by Swiss companies and academic institutions, Microsoft Exchange is a highly scalable solution that can support a very large number of users, and was designed from the outset to ensure e-mail synchronization between the server and end-user clients. Exchange provides not only e-mail, but also a global address book of contacts, a calendar, meeting scheduling and task management.
If you've decided to use Microsoft Exchange, the next step is to choose a Hosted Exchange server. Hosted Exchange is a service that provides a Microsoft Exchange mailbox and available storage space via a third-party server.
The Hosted Exchange provider manages data on a cloud-based server, including sent and received mail, contacts and calendar data. An Exchange server can manage tens of thousands of e-mail accounts and data, making it the solution of choice for many corporate environments. While its power and storage space are excessive for the personal e-mail needs of most individuals, it is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses right up to the enterprise.
Hosted Exchange offers many advantages, such as automatic software updates, maintenance and technical support. There are no physical servers, and you can get a much more secure service.
To find out more about Hosted Exchange in Switzerland, click here!
Email accounts for over 90% of all business communications. These communications contain valuable business data such as contracts, purchase orders, invoices, presentations and so on. Because of the sensitivity and value of this content, companies have to comply with numerous regulations.
At the same time, companies are also facing other IT challenges due to the growth in messaging data. IT departments are struggling to meet ever-increasing storage requirements, while keeping their mail servers in optimum condition. The solution is simple: email archiving. But which tool should you choose? And what for?
In Switzerland, there are many reasons to implement an e-mail archiving solution. The main ones are: regulatory compliance, litigation cases, data preservation and intellectual property protection, mail server and storage optimization, mail server backup and disaster recovery
and finally monitoring the content of e-mail communications.
Although Microsoft has taken a good first step towards implementing archiving for Exchange Server, the giant needs to further refine its functionality in order to execute archiving properly. Control over some of the functionality lies with the end-user, which is a major flaw in the implementation of archiving from a regulatory point of view.
Users are responsible for managing their own archiving needs by moving e-mail from the main mailbox to the personal archive. However, it is up to the company to make decisions regarding archiving policy. Under no circumstances should end-users make decisions about which e-mails to archive and which to delete. Firstly, because users have to make discerning decisions for each e-mail, which takes time. Secondly, they risk deleting e-mails that should be saved. This defeats the purpose of archiving.
On Microsoft Exchange, users define their own retention rules. As messages move from the main mailbox to the personal archive, different rules may apply, such as moving messages after 90 days, moving messages to a subfolder of the personal archive after 180 days, or moving messages from a subfolder to deleted items after 180 days. Once again, when it comes to e-mail archiving, the company needs to draw up retention policies. Depending on government and industry regulations, a company must implement a company-wide retention policy. Not all users have the knowledge or understanding of the company's ever-changing regulatory requirements, and should not be tasked with deciding how long e-mails should be retained.
Microsoft Exchange was not designed for archiving. As a result, its ability to store large amounts of data and retrieve it quickly is quite limited. Using only single-instance, compression and deduplication technologies, Microsoft's archiving solution in no way minimizes or optimizes disk usage. The result? Your local disks are overloaded and you don't know where to store important e-mails.
As you may have gathered, Microsoft offers a wide range of powerful Microsoft 365 services, but a full backup of your 365 data is not one of them. By choosing a 365 backup solution from EVOK, you protect your Microsoft 365 from damage, enabling rapid recovery of deleted data.
With fast, efficient data recovery, users can easily restore their data. A copy of the data is saved locally on a NAS or USB hard drive.
Our solutions are scalable according to your needs, thanks to the use of data storage on Hitachi SAN clusters.
For even greater protection, EVOK online backup encrypts all data using AES 256-bit encryption technology, making your data unreadable throughout the backup process. Only you know the encryption key that makes your documents readable.
The primary objective of the archiving solution is to preserve e-mails. The gold standard for e-mail storage is that it must be court-approved. Thanks to 100% Swiss storage, we can guarantee you an e-mail archiving solution that will pass any industry audit and comply with all regulations.
E-mail archiving is an essential practice for many businesses and professionals, as e-mails are often an important source of information and communication. However, it's important to follow best practices to ensure efficient and secure archiving. In this article, we present the 10 best e-mail archiving practices you need to know.
Develop a clear, well-defined e-mail archiving policy for your organization. This policy should specify the selection criteria for e-mails to be archived, the retention period, user responsibilities and the procedures to be followed.
Invest in reliable, secure e-mail archiving tools. These tools enable you to manage archives easily and efficiently, search for specific e-mails and ensure compliance with data retention regulations.
Adopt a consistent classification structure for your e-mail archives. Use clearly named folders and sub-folders to classify e-mails according to subject, date or any other relevant criteria. This will facilitate subsequent search and retrieval.
Use automated e-mail archiving solutions to simplify the process. These tools can be configured to automatically archive e-mails according to predefined parameters, reducing the risk of omissions or human error.
Find out about the data retention regulations specific to your industry and make sure you comply with them when archiving e-mails.
Don't forget to make regular backups of your e-mail archives. Backups protect you against data loss in the event of a system failure or major incident.
Make your users aware of goode-mail archiving practices. Provide training and resources to help them understand the importance of archiving, the policies to follow and effective search methods.
Encourage your users to avoid sending large e-mail attachments. These files can clutter up archives and increase storage requirements.
Make sure your e-mail archives are secure by implementing appropriate security measures.
Finally, don't forget to regularly review and update your e-mail archiving policy to take account of technological developments, current regulations and the specific needs of your organization.
By following these 10 best practices for e-mail archiving, you can ensure efficient, secure and compliant management of your archives. This makes e-mail archiving an easier task, enabling your organization to manage information efficiently and meet legal and regulatory requirements for data retention.
Before you start migrating, it's essential to understand your organization's specific needs. This includes the size of your business, the number of users, required functionality and security policies. A thorough assessment of your needs will help you choose the right Exchange edition (e.g. Exchange Online or Exchange Server) and determine the best migration approach.
Planning is a crucial step in ensuring a successful migration. You need to draw up a detailed timetable, identify the necessary resources and designate a team responsible for the migration. Make sure you also take into account your company's peak business hours to minimize disruption.
Before migrating to Exchange, you need to make sure your infrastructure is ready. This includes updating operating systems, configuring servers, managing SSL certificates, and resolving compatibility issues. You may also need to update your hardware if necessary.
Data migration is one of the most critical parts of the transition to Exchange. You need to transfer all e-mails, contacts, calendars and other important data from your old e-mail solution to Exchange. This can be done using specific migration tools provided by Microsoft or third-party solutions.
Once your data has been migrated, you need to configure Exchange according to your organization's needs. This includes creating mailboxes, configuring security settings, customizing mail flows, setting up message retention policies, and much more.
Be sure to train your staff in the use of Microsoft Exchange, focusing on new features and security best practices. Also provide technical support to resolve any problems that may survive after migration.
Before putting your Exchange environment into production, carry out thorough tests to make sure that everything is running smoothly. Check that e-mails are routed correctly, calendars are synchronized and collaboration features work as expected.
Once you've confirmed that everything is ready, proceed with the production migration. Make sure you have a backup plan in case of problems, and follow the timetable carefully.
Migrating to Microsoft Exchange is a complex process, but by carefully following the key steps we've outlined, your company can make this important transition a success. However, every organization has its own unique needs and challenges, which is why we invite you to get in touch with our Microsoft Exchange migration experts. Our skilled team is ready to guide you every step of the way to ensure a smooth and successful migration to this advanced messaging and collaboration platform. Please contact us today to discuss your project. Your success is our priority.
Virtualization has become an essential component for companies seeking to maximize the use of their hardware resources while simplifying infrastructure management. This innovative approach offers significant benefits, from operational efficiency to accumulated flexibility. Discover how virtualization can transform your IT environment, defining the way your business operates and interacts with technology.
By consolidating multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, virtualization enables more efficient use of resources, reducing hardware purchase and maintenance costs. Consolidation also favors a balanced distribution of workloads, avoiding under- or over-utilization of resources.
Virtualization offers exceptional flexibility, making it easy to move virtual machines between servers and adjust them as needed. This simplifies the evolution of your infrastructure in line with changing business requirements. Scalability becomes a reality, enabling your business to grow unhindered by hardware constraints.
Virtualization solutions often incorporate advanced security features, enhancing data and application protection. Isolating virtual environments helps minimize the risk of compromise. What's more, the ability to create isolated test environments makes it easier to validate the security of applications before they are deployed in production.
Virtualization facilitates rapid backup and recovery, minimizing downtime in the event of failure. Snapshots, which capture the state of a virtual machine at a given time, and instant migration of virtual machines are key features for ensuring optimal business continuity. This strengthens business resilience in the face of unforeseen events.
Centralize your infrastructure management with dedicated tools, simplifying maintenance, monitoring and updating tasks. This saves administrators time and minimizes errors. Centralized management also facilitates the implementation of uniform security policies across all virtual environments.
Consolidating virtual machines on a reduced number of servers helps to reduce energy consumption, thus promoting a more environmentally-friendly approach. This energy optimization is in line with growing concerns about sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
Virtualization provides an ideal platform for adopting new technologies such as cloud computing, boosting business agility and competitiveness. It creates an environment conducive to the integration of innovative solutions, positioning the company at the forefront of digital transformation.
EVOK's experts don't just implement virtualization solutions. They bring a holistic vision that sees virtualization as a key component of a complete IT transformation. By integrating virtualization into an overall IT strategy, your business can benefit from increased agility, better resource management and enhanced security.
If you aspire to take full advantage of the benefits of virtualization and embrace a complete IT transformation, don't hesitate to contact the experts at EVOK. Our skilled team can develop a customized strategy based on your company's specific needs. From planning to implementation, we're here to guide you towards maximum operational efficiency, enhanced flexibility and unrivalled IT security.
