Most all of my clients have either a BlackBerry or an iPhone.  And almost all of them use Microsoft Exchange.  This is not going to be a compare and contrast of who is better: the BlackBerry or the iPhone.  Of couse the iPhone has ActiveSync integrated into the OS if you have the Enterprise Data Plan from your Wireless Provider.  But now there is an equalizer, AstraSync enters the picture.  AstraSync allows for you to synchronize your BlackBerry with your Exchange server without having to Install BlackBerry Enterprise Server or its free counterpart.  AstraSync is like ActiveSync for the BlackBerry.  It allows you to get and recieve Exchange Email, it updates your calendar and your contacts, you can flag messages and add attatchments.  Pretty slick if you ask me.  Also, what I hear is that you do not have to upgrade your phone to the Enterprise Data Plan to be able to use it.  You can just get an unlimited data plan with your provider and away you go.  The software costs $49 per year and is well worth it when you look at your savings from not having to have an Enterprise Data Plan.  They also offer a free trial so that you can get your feet wet with to see if you really want it.  Just use the link below to give it a try.

http://www.astrasync.com/

Here's the situation.  I have a corporate email account on hosted exchange (Microsoft BPOS) and this is my work email, calendar, and contacts.  I also have a Google apps domain for my personal email, calendar and contacts.  I am a Google voice user and share my Google apps calendar with my wife.  It is essential that these calendars and contacts are the same.  I also have an iPhone that uses the exchange active sync connection and have to Goggle apps account setup for email only.

In the dark days of owning my blackberry, I tried to sync everything using the Google app on the phone.  The results were disastrous.  I had to undo the sync and restore from a backup.  I also received errors all the time saying that the contacts and calendar were being synched by another program (Enterprise activated) and could not complete or a duplicate would be created.  

This time around, I said that I need the application to reside my desktop to handle the issue.  I searched and searched for something free to do this but could not find it.  Add to the complexity that I am running office 2010 x64 edition.  This only further narrowed my options.

After searching for a while, I found Gsyncit. (http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/).  I read all about it and decided it was going to do everything I wanted it to.  The app is $14.99, but very much so worth every penny.  It took about 10 minutes to setup, and then I had some de-duplicating to do in contacts because the contacts between Google Apps domain and Outlook were already out of sync from me manually doing it when I remembered to.  The de-duplication process to about 20 minutes.  I have almost 300 contacts so not to bad.

But here's where I ended up after my $14.99 purchase and 30 minutes of work.  All contacts and calendars are synched between the two accounts.  If I make a change on my phone while I am on the road, it gets updated to corporate exchange.  Then when I get back to the office, I load Outlook and all those changes are synched back to the Google side.  I can also accept invitations from either of my accounts in any method I want.  Then changes are synched later when Outlook is loaded on my desktop.  Finally, since all my contacts are in sync, Goggle voice calls are very rarely unknown callers any more and I am no longer required to press 1 to accept the call of an unknown caller.

To be a complete nerd for a little bit, I have been trying to accomplish this for a very long time.   I have seen Gsyncit for a while but really didn't want to pay $14.99.  It has been a frustrating uphill battle to get these all in sync but now that they are, I feel major satisfaction.  

I had a client contact me recently about email encryption.  I new already that there were 3 ways to go about this:

1. You can use a service that manages the encryption.
2. Install an encryption gateway at your office.
3. Or install a desktop app that you have to manage public and private keys for.

This is a necessity for many that send sensitive email because once an email leaves your organization it is no longer encrypted. 

Example 1:  You have hotmail account and you email a yahoo account: the email is not encrypted once it leaves hotmail's servers.  and visa versa.

Example 2: You have an Exchange Server in your organization and you email another company out there that has an Exchange server by default these messages are not encrypted either. **

While I was updating my pricing list for different services to recommend, I found a very compelling new service:  http://www.sendinc.com

The service does not store any of your data.  You go to the main page which has the email form on it.  After you type in your email address they require you to register.  You then create your message and choose who you want to send it to.  You can attach as much as 10 Megabytes of attachments.  The message is encrypted and then attached to an email that is emailed to the recipient.  So the message is no longer stored at Sendinc.  When the end user opens the website attachment the data is uploaded to the website and decrypted there.  All data transmissions are RSA SSL encrypted (1024 Bits).  Even if you forward your email to someone else they cannot read it.  It has to be opened from your email.

I give this web app two enthusiastic thumbs up!

**You can create a site to site encryption in Exchange server between different email domains but that is beyond the scope of this post and would be time consuming for managing the certificates between any domain and all the domains that you would want to encrypt your email between.

My definition of CLOUD:  The most over used buzz word of recent times.  Putting that aside, some IT solutions just fit better with someone else hosting and maintaining that part of your business.  Today, I am focusing on email.  

Money: Yes, money talks.  You can host email offsite for as little as $4.17 / month / user and a maximum of $10 / month / user.  This isn't with some fly by night company either.  We are talking about Microsoft and Google.  Let's case study a company with 30 employees needing to upgrade their email server and say that the company replaces equipment precisely every 4 years.  Option 1: Purchase new server and replace.  Cost: Approximately $7500.  (Server + Software + Licensing) .  Option 2: Google apps domain: Yearly cost $1500 and total cost over 4 years is $6000 plus initial setup (man hours). Option 3: Microsoft hosted exchange: Yearly cost of $1800 and total cost over 4 years $7200 plus initial setup (man hours).  Option 4: Microsoft BPOS: Yearly cost of $3600 and total cost over 4 years $14400 plus initial setup (man hours).

With the last 3 options, the best news is that after the first four years, your company is purchasing new equipment.  You continue to pay your monthly fee and upgrades and improvements are added to your hosting solution in the cloud with out any intervention from your IT staff.

Maintenance:  I am in no way saying the cloud is maintenance free, but I am saying that your IT staff will spend much less time maintaining the email hosted in the cloud once the initial setup is done.  Think of this, the burden of backups, uptime, equipment and so on is now rolled up into a nominal fee you are paying.  

Reliability: Service Level Agreement!  What would it cost your company to place a redundant email system to a data center that offered very high speed internet and redundancy.  I have recently priced this and $20k - $30k for hardware alone.  Add on a $500 - $1500 monthly fee for the data center and internet.  All this exercise was to get your SLA up to 99.9%.  Or, when you buy a hosted solution, it comes with that SLA bundled in you low recurring fee. 

Eat our own Dog Food: Not only do we recommend these solutions, but we use them too. Our corporate email is hosted with Microsoft BPOS.  Personally, I have a Google apps domain for my family.  I like both products and they both are reliable and quality products.  

Ready to buy yet?   If this peaked you're interest and you are ready to switch, give Strickland Networks a call.  Not only can well help you chose the right solution, we can help you implement it as well.