What is Microsoft Exchange Server?

Microsoft Exchange Server is business-class email and scheduling/calendaring from Microsoft that runs solely on the Windows Server operating system. If a company (or school) uses Microsoft Exchange Server for email, that account is an Exchange account. Put simply, it is a piece of software that runs on a server and manages all your company emails. Outgoing, incoming, stored, drafts, calendars – everything is performed securely via Microsoft Exchange and securely stored on your server.

Typically, it boosts and smooths creativity and productivity while also protecting your data. Exchange Server synchronises mail and schedules across all your devices, seamlessly, and helps businesses to improve performance, connectivity, and to minimise downtime.

There are many ways to configure Microsoft Exchange Server, a speciality of ours as an IT support company, but it offers some clear advantages and features that make it perfect for keeping small and medium-sized businesses connected and running at peak efficiency. There have been numerous feature-rich versions of Exchange Server since its original release in 1996, each improving on the previous edition and each with its own features and enhancements. Here are just a few Exchange Server benefits for business.

1. Data standards protection.
   Through ‘deep content analysis’ Microsoft Exchange Server can improve business security by monitoring content sent from company accounts and preventing users from accidently, or maliciously, sending messages that may contain sensitive content to unauthorised recipients. This is ideal for policing internal compliance policies and managing email security – with built in data loss prevention policies based on regulatory standards such as payment card industry (PCI) and personally identifiable information (PII) that require legal compliance. Using Microsoft Exchange Server gives a firms data security management team the ability to examine and analyse company data and review any communications remotely, if required. Most business policies can be monitored and controlled via Exchange Server, with prompts sent to users via Outlook when company policies or security is breached – before confidential or delicate information is posted.
2. Flexible storage.
   Your staff and business users can make use of Microsoft Exchange Server features to keep all their emails in one place, as it suits them and reflecting how they use their inbox. Users have access to their entire archive and have the flexibility to keep all their emails in their main inbox or to store them and file them for later reference. Exchange Server offers a high degree of flexibility, across all devices, letting admins set policies or letting individual users organise their email communications as best suits them – keeping them productive. With a clean and uncluttered inbox, it’s a lot easier to get more done. Microsoft Exchange Server also offers automatic filtration to give the business user a more professional email environment where they can view their messages across multiple devices and have important and relevant information optimised for different interfaces, in the office, at home or on the move – Outlook, mobile, in-browser, etc. – meaning a consistent experience and improved workflow.
3. Collaboration tools.
   Microsoft Exchange Server lets users collaborate on mutual projects, giving them the ability to easily share information, work together more effectively and to quickly get familiar with any divisional (or project) teams to which they are invited. Team communication is all managed in one place, letting collaborators see a full history of legacy messaging and interactions and allowing access to the most up-to-date working versions of team documents – all though a familiar and easy-to-use interface. Users have a suite of powerful productivity tools and can manage information by location, affording excellent security. From public folders and distribution groups to shared mailboxes – file storage, co-authoring functionality and version management is all provided by SharePoint and messaging is delivered via Exchange Server with a seamless user experience in Microsoft Outlook.
4. Spam and phishing filtration.
   Exchange offers active protection of incoming business mail against potential cyber-attacks. Updated continuously, Microsoft Exchange Server’s anti-spam engine can protect against the very latest external threats to your network from the ever-present threat and inconvenience of junk email senders, the dangers of malware and those malicious phishing scams that target online businesses.
5. Consolidate connections.
   Microsoft Exchange Server lets users import all their professional connections from multiple sources and from other networks, without duplicates. Exchange can pull multiple contact information together and build a clean, working address book of optimised connections – invaluable when keeping your team talking to the right people and with the most current data.

There are many other advantages of Microsoft Exchange Server. If you would like to know more about the benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server, or would like us to look at a custom solution for your business, we’d be happy to offer our advice or a quotation. Give us a call on 01509 808586 to find out more.

Posted on: 18th August 2020.