Microsoft Exchange 2010 Control Panel

With the new LogicalSolutions.net Exchange 2010 Hosted Control Panel, not only do you control your e-mail costs but you can also control your Exchange 2010 environment. With our Hosted Exchange 2010 Control Panel you can manage and edit your company’s Exchange options with the click of a button.  Create and admin a new user in under a minute!

Our Exchange 2010 Control Panel offers you the ability to:

• Create Users
• Create Contacts
• Create Distribution Lists
• Create Public Folders
• Set User Storage Limits
• Monitor Storage Usage

Contact us today to move to the Exchange 2010 Control Panel Platform.  2010 is coming to a close, what are you waiting for?

Email Hosting in the Cloud

The National Baseball Hall of Fame Chooses the LogicalSolutions.net Cloud

The National Baseball Hall of Fame’s (NBHOF) website (baseballhall.org) was undergoing development and a redesign. With the growing popularity of social media and video content on the web, the NBHOF needed a hosting company that can provide a stable, secure environment with plenty of available bandwidth. With the popularity of baseball and interest in the Hall and Museum, the Hall of Fame is a very high traffic website and 100% uptime was imperative. Two additional priorities were cost and customer support. The NFHOF is a non-profit organization so the price had to be right. Finally, if the NBHOF wasn’t able to call in and speak to someone when there was an issue or a change was needed, this would be a deal breaker.

Read the Full Case Study Here

Annual IT Networking Event

LogicalSolutions.net hosts their Annual IT Networking Event at the LogicalSolutions.net IT Campus on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 from 4-7:00pm.  Every year we invite Customers, Partners and IT Professionals to network and meet the LogicalSolutions.net staff.  Beer, Wine, and Happy Hour Appetizers will be provided.  Registration for the event is Free, and you can Register Online Here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Comparing LogicalSolutions.net vs. Amazon Cloud vs. RackSpace Cloud

The primary reason most organizations look to cloud computing is the cost savings. So when you’re evaluating cloud hosting providers, it’s important to understand the price models of each vendor. It’s easy to get caught up in advertised entry pricing but be sure to compare apples to apples.

When comparing what is included with LogicalSolutions.net against the Amazon Cloud or RackSpace Cloud, you’ll quickly discover how much LogicalSolutions.net can save your company on their hosting costs.

Here is an example of a typical VPS (or virtual private server) environment for one of our customers.

You can clearly see the cost savings that LogicalSolutions.net’s pricing model provides. There are no hidden costs or other pay as you go expenses that can add up in a hurry. If you’re already with Amazon or RackSpace, or simply looking into Cloud options, contact one of our Sales Engineers today for a free cost assessment.

Rochester Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery

I speak with many customers and prospective customers regarding disaster recovery. No matter how many times I hear it, I still get surprised at how many companies have no interest in storing their mission critical data off-site.

There’s a great story I’d like to share about one of our customers that had recently signed up for our disaster recovery services. He is in the medical industry (a dentist) and all of the patient information was stored on a local server. The building is fairly old and by no means was this building fireproof. He took all the precautions with RAID drives and swapping drives in and out to ensure he won’t lose his data due to a drive or hardware failure. I have spoken with him on several occasions on how important it was to store this information off-site in a safe, secure datacenter. He always reassured me his information was safe and nothing would ever happen.  After realizing the small expense it was to back this up off-site, the decision to move forward with off-site backup was an insurance policy that was worth the peace of mind.  So he finally signed up for our backup services.

One morning he arrived in his office and his server was dead. There was a cooling issue within the building and the extreme heat fried his server. All the hard drives were dead so the RAID configuration didn’t save him. All the data was lost. Lucky for him, BackupSpace automatically backed up all his data to the cloud the night before. Without any intervention, the software backed up the entire server on schedule. There was some inconvenience in restoring the data, but that’s all it was, an inconvenience. He didn’t lose any mission critical data or information. And if he ever gets hit with an audit, all of his records are still intact.

The moral of the store is simple. Don’t wait for a disaster to strike before you start to plan for disaster recovery.  LogicalSolutions.net has a variety of DR plans to meet your specific needs. Contact one of our sales engineers today to learn more.

Email Archiving Compliance, E-Discovery Compliance, and FRCP

Many industries (we’ve especially noticed hospitals) are dealing with a growing number of lawsuits each year. This is forcing IT Managers to evaluate their methods for e-discovery of their historical e-mail records. Most organizations are still using tape backups for all their disaster recovery as well as their e-mail archiving. This has become inadequate.

With the passing of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) a few years ago, the landscape has drastically changed.  A key point to FRCP is, organizations must manage their electronically stored information, or ESI, so that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary.  This includes legal matters. Here are a few things that have become reality:

• The courts no longer tolerate an organization that has not yet implemented timely programs to accurately retrieve email.
• Just implementing a policy for retention is not enough. You must prove that they are enforced at all levels.
• The penalties for failing to meet the FRCP deadlines can be much larger than putting a system in place.
• Limited staff and resources are not excuses for missing deadlines, even for small organizations.

What does this all mean? You now need to have an efficient e-mail archiving and e-discovery solution in place.  There are no exceptions for company size, non-profit status, or foreign organizations.  Courts are no longer lenient or patient for you to come up with the emails needed.  A procedure and policy must be in place.

We have had many clients and prospective clients tell us they’ve spent weeks digging through tape backups to find the e-mails needed during a lawsuit and they plan on never doing anything like that ever again.  Our archiving solution easily integrates with Microsoft Exchange.  So make e-mail archiving and e-discovery part of your complete hosted e-mail solution.  Contact us today for options and pricing.

Setting up Outlook Connection to Exchange 2010 using Outlook Anywhere

Use Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Exchange server without VPN.  To use outlook anywhere there are server setting that need to be made on the exchange server.   Why enable Outlook Anywhere?   Outlook can connect to Exchange through the Internet by using remote procedure call (RPC) over HTTPS. The Outlook Anywhere feature allows you to access your Exchange account remotely from the Internet when you are working outside your organization’s firewall.

Before you attempt to use outlook anywhere check with your exchange administrator to make sure this is set up.

To make the connection
Open up the control panel

Click the Mail icon

Click on Show Profiles

Click Add

Enter name and press “OK”

Check “Manually configure Server settings” Click Next

Check “Microsoft Exchange” Click Next

Enter Server name,  Username and click More Settings
This should popup a window asking for the connection information to the exchange server

Enter in your username as “Domain name\username”
Then Enter your password. Check remember password if you wish. Click OK
This will bring up the more settings Window

Click on the Connection Tab

Check the box for “Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP”
Then Click on “Exchange Proxy Settings”

Enter Server name and click OK.
This will take you to the following screen.

Click OK.

Now you can click next.

Click finish.

If I have more than 1 profile I always have Outlook ask me to choose on startup
Click OK and open up outlook

Select your new user and click OK

This will ask for the login credentials again.

Enter in your username as “Domain name\username”
Then Enter your password. Check remember password if you wish. Click OK

This should open up Outlook and you should be all set, now enjoy working remote and VPN Free with Exchange!

HIPAA Email Compliance and GLBA Email Compliance

There are a lot of companies out there providing email services, even a hosted Microsoft Exchange solution. But what if you find yourself in an industry that’s heavily regulated and has many rules when it comes to handling information about individuals or cases, etc.? This is the reality that the healthcare industry and the financial industry face.

The healthcare industry falls under the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act or HIPAA. This puts rules on organizations on how they handle their email communication. For example, all email communication must be secure or encrypted. We partner with xDefenders, a leader in information security solutions, who leverage Zix Encryption. Zix Encryption is the industry standard for email encryption. This prevents anyone from viewing the content of the email who isn’t supposed to. Another item to be concerned with is email archiving. Under this regulation, you are required to provide email communication for anything that’s under question in the event of an investigation from the previous 7 years. The easiest and most efficient way to provide logged emails is with email archiving and e-discovery services. Having the ability to easily search all archived emails and pull up what’s needed within minutes is invaluable to an IT staff. This can eliminated hours and sometimes days of searching for what’s needed.

A second industry that falls under similar regulation and compliance is the financial industry. Financial institutions fall under the Graham, Leach, Bliley Act or GLBA. This is very similar to HIPAA and we have many clients that we provide these services to as well.

Whether you’re in the health care or financial industries, our team can provide you a fully compliant email solution. We understand HIPAA and GLBA better than anyone and can provide you with the one-stop solution for your hosted email and compliance needs. Both LogicalSolutions.net and xDefenders are SAS70 Type II Certified to ensure we have you covered. Call us and speak to our team today.

Get compliant for as low as $12 a month per mailbox. Find out more by clicking here.

Cloud Computing and Remote Desktop Services (Formally Terminal Services)

LogicalSolutions.net has been providing cloud computing services for our customers in the Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo regions as well as across the U.S for 15 years. With the huge explosion of interest in cloud computing over the past year or two, we’ve had many current and prospective customers come to us for ways to migrate to a cloud platform. They have also heard that a cloud platform can reduce IT costs.

A great way to reduce costs is to run your application with terminal services.  This method can reduce license costs for the application and streamline maintaining the software and hardware. This can free up your IT staff to concentrate on more mission critical projects. Typically, when introducing terminal services, additional layers were required. You had to purchase additional licenses for Citrix Terminal Services, for example. This can be very costly.

With Windows Server 2008 R2, a core virtualization technology available is terminal services. We can setup your architecture to take advantage of the functionality built right into the server’s OS. We utilize Remote Desktop Services (this used to be called Terminal Services and was renamed to Remote Desktop Services) to allow your users to access your applications from anywhere in the world from a hosted location. This is done directly through Windows Server 2008 without adding additional layers or Citrix licenses.  Setting up Citrix Terminal Services also requires a high, upfront investment to purchase the licenses needed. With Windows Remote Desktop Services, we can provide an alternative payment structure with a small, per user, monthly cost. This can greatly reduce the strain on your IT budget and expenses.

Contact us today to speak to a Sales Engineer and see how much you can save with virtualization and our cloud computing services.