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Microsoft BPOS 

is a unique offering from Microsoft which allows you to host a full


exchange mailbox in the cloud for only $5/month.  For an additional $5/month you can
add sharepoint, secure instant messaging and full online meeting sharing to each
mailbox.  The system fully supports the ability to add a Blackberry to your mailbox
($10/month additional fee).  Unlike Google Apps email, this is a real, full
implementation of Exchange.  Your Exchange mailbox is available via web, or online
through Outlook, with full exchange support or synchronization.  Sharepoint, live
meeting and Microsoft Communicator are also available with one simple login for all.  
The service features mail spam filtering and virus control, as well as up to 25gb of
storage.  Existing Exchange (and other email) systems can be migrated without any loss
of data and with very easy transition for your users.

Here is a list of things that you can do with BPOS that can't be done with Google Apps:

 Mail folders and categories - google only support tagging rather than folders, and
categories are not supported at all.
 Rich formatting - Rich formatting done in Outlook is altered as it passes thorugh
Gmail's servers
 Flags/Reminders/importance: Flags are stars in Gmail and can't be sent to
others.  Followup reminders and priority are not supported.
 Signature - Outlook and Exchange lets you create multiple signatures, and
choose from them - even designating particular signatures for particular email
clients - even using those same signatures on mail in the web application.  In
Google Apps you get only one signature.
 Granular permissions: In Google apps you only have one level of mailbox sharing
- full access.  Exchange allows designation of particular rights to each shared
mailbox and user.
 Free/Busy - Calendar only supports free/busy, not tentative or out of office as in
Exchange.
 Attendees for meetings - Google apps only allows you to designate required
attendees - no optional, and no tentative responses in the calendar.
 Attachments and rich formatting for calendar items - Google apps doesn't
support this - Exchange has the full mail editor capabilities for calendar items.
 Contact folder and categories - Google has one group for all contacts
 Flags, dates and reminders by contact - Google doesn't suppor this
 Richly fomatted notes - Not only does Exchange support fully formatted notes,
but your notes can be much larger than Google's 16k limit.
 Sharing contacts - Google does not support sharing contacts.  Each user has to
maintain a full copy and update it themselves of any shared contacts, using
import/export or manual entry.
 Journaling - no google support
 Instant messaging using Microsoft Communicator is far more sophisticated.  It
uses Active directory for federation, and tracks users online and offline status
using rules that can be set up in communicator.  Communications can be
initiated from within email, sharepoint or anyplace else that communicator is
integrated (even within applications programs like Word).
 Offline view and reading of email - not supported by Google for all mail - user
must have google gears and individually mark which mails will be available
offline.
 Spell check and add/edit contacts offline is not available in Google Apps
 Edit, compose or create calendars, Tasks or calendar entries offline is not
available in Google Apps
 Microsoft BPOS offers access to Exchange, and Sharepoint from mobile devices
including Windows Mobile 6+, RIM Blackberry, Iphones and other activesync
technologies.  Google licenses activesync but doesn't fully support it on all
platforms.
 In Googles hosted services your corporate data is intermingled with all other
users of their GMail apps.  Google refuses to take any backup responsibility for
data loss should their backup fail.  These limitations make the Google Apps
solutions particularly troublesome for SOX compliance and the Patriot Act.  Users
choose what country their data center can reside in, and can actually be mixed
and matched with local Exchange servers so that some data is reserved local,
and others are available through the BPOS servers.  This allows companies to
carefully craft their Exchange network to ensure the proper security and storage
regardless of where the data resides.
 Microsoft services can be integrated with your local Active Directory server -
allowing you to change/add/delete users in Active Directory and have the same
changes reflected automatically in your Exchange mailboxes and sharepoint
accounts on BPOS
 Google does not support tags such as "don't forward" and "view only" -
restricting a recipient's right to send data on to another receiver.
 Microsoft Exchange email can be encrypted using TLS, Kerberos, and IPSec
technologies.
 BPOS technical support phone personell are available 24x7x365.  Google phone
technical support is avialable only during the week from 5pm PST on Sunday
utnil 5pm PST on Friday.
 Google only covers SLA violation losses with service credit.  Microsoft's
Financially backed SLA means that if you experience downtime - however short -
you will get a dollar credit to your account.  With Microsoft BPOS if your server is
ever down - even for a short period of time - you immediately get a 25% service
credit.  If uptime is below 99% you get a 50% service credit.  If uptime is below
95% you get a full credit for that month's service.  With Google they don't count
downtimes of less than 10 minutes, they give you a 3 day service credit for
downtime from 99%-99.9%, a 7 day service credit for 99-95% and max out at
15 days service credit if your mail system is down more than 5%/month.
 Training costs - Outlook users using Google Apps have to contend with the many
features that are not supported at all, are partially supported, or are supported
only in the web interface.  BPOS users have no such restrictions, so training (if
they are already using Outlook) is nil.
 Microsoft's Sharepoint Services (part of BPOS full suite) offers full editing of
documents using any version of office, with a complete feature set and no lost
functionality on save to the sharepoint site.  Sharepoint sites appear directly in
the end-users's applications such as word or excel and they can save directly to
the shared server.  Google Docs only offers share and forward capabilities, and a
limited implementation of the full editors.
 BPOS is more predictable.  Google removed offline docs with only 3 weeks notice
- a disaster for companies that had relied on that capability.  BPOS will never be
updated with less than 90 days notice, and if a client does not wish to receive an
update - they can individually choose not to have their account be updated with
future releases or upgrades.
 A transition from a local Exchange or Outlook email system to Google or
Microsoft can be problematic for the google users since the following features
will not be transferred and will "Disappear" once the transition is complete to
Google Docs: Flags, Reminders, Importance, Inbox rules, signatures, delegation
and sharing permissions, some free and busy status types, tentative and optional
attendee types, attachmetns and rich formatting in calenders, calendar sharing
or delegation settings, contact categories, Personal groups or discussion lists,
flags dates and reminders in contacts, Notes larger than 16k are truncated and
all formatting is lost, Global address lists, Global distribution lists, Notes, tasks
and journal entries,
 Transition from Lotus Notes to Google can also be a problem, mail folder names
are truncated at 40 characters, all executable attachmetns and rich formatting in
email is stripped, flags reminders and importance are lost, inbox rules,
singatures, delegation and sharing, encrypted mail is lost, attachments and
formatting in calendars is lost, sharing and delegation in calendars is lost,
attachments notes and links in personal contacts is lost, tasks do not migrate. 
BPOS supports all of these transitions properly when moving Notes to BPOS

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