In house or hosted Email / Web sites

[AdamGent]

Hi guys,

I'm just curious as to what you are currently using for your school email systems, what you do about web hosting and what your plans / views are toward hosted services

e.g. Hosted Exchange, Hosted Sharepoint, External Dedicated Servers / External Virtual Machines

How much do you pay now (approx for in-house, or hosted - if so what do you use)

Thanks

[webman]

Totally run in-house by myself and the network manager.

Ubuntu Linux + Zimbra for email; and Ubuntu Linux for hosting all websites and web-based apps.

Cost was nothing apart from the hardware (one box was recycled) and our time (very minimal). Bandwidth usage is relatively minimal to the outside world for what is hosted - we have a > 10Mbit fibre connection. Average number of users accessing email from home is 5-15; not sure on exact web usage.

Primary advantage is that the school continues to function when the internet connection dies or performs poorly. We couldn't do this at the mercy of an ISP or a third-party provider of email/web hosting.

[AdamGent]

So do you use leased lines or some similar service?

I take it you have good availability, how many users do you have on the system?

[rh91uk]

Here we run Exchange 2003 and a remote access system here. All websites are hosted externally. All web services internally are hosted on IIS.

Over the summer we are moving to a combination on hosting our web services on Ubuntu Linux (where we can!!) and IIS7 for the ASP applications, aswell as upgrading to exch2007. Virtualised.

[Fuzzz]

We run Exchange 2003 with OWA internally. Works very well...
We also have an internal dedicated webserver for several sites

We pay € 81.26 per annum for the Exchange license, for IIS we use Windows 2003 Standard, wich costs us € 59.52 per annum. And of course, there are the costs of the hardware, electricity and cooling.

[AdamGent]

It seems that the trend is away from outsourced / hosted services and towards more in-house IT services?

Is this for cost, control or do you not trust your providers to be more reliable than your own resources?

[webman]

Is this for cost, control or do you not trust your providers to be more reliable than your own resources?

For us, all of the above.

[AdamGent]

For us, all of the above.

I can see the cost aspect for definite there with your heavy / total use of Open Source.

Interested if you use MS AD for your workplace / school computers?


Myself and a few other started an outsourced / Hosted Services company a few months ago, after 6 months of deployment building the platform (Highly redundant w/ support for upto 10,000 Concurrent users) for the three MS UM components (Exchange, OCS, Sharepoint) inc SIP VoIP calling support.

I was curious as to what the motions are in the schools sector,

we hand the control of all your users and accounts to you, and can integrate your logons with your own AD.

[nadeem]

We use hosted exchange for staff (we also have hosted sharepoint and bes) via a commercial company [pm me if you want to know who]

We use hosted exchange for students/alumni via Microsoft live@edu (for free)

If cost is a real issue and you don't want a completely free solution, then Microsoft do their own paid for version of Exchange hosting (BPOS) with an SLA etc.

[EduTech]

We host everything internally now:

School Website: EduJoomla
Virtual Learning Platform: Sharepoint 2007
Virtual Learning Enviroment: Talmos
Staff and Student Email: Exchange 2007

All Behind ISA 2006

And the reason we host it all internally, is generally down to cost, control and flexibility! obviously you will need to make sure you have a stable internet connection as well as a Failover connection if possible :-)

James.

[mossj]

Email: Hosted internally on a 2003 Exchange server with OWA
VLE: Hosted by county
Website/other programs: Hosted externaly

I choose to have the website external as:
A) It costs next to nothing.

B) I know the host will have 99.9% availability and will be keeping an eye on things 24/7.

C) It means I'm in charge of it, not the NM. For me this is the biggest issue, as he has a habit of breaking things/changing passwords willy nilly/not documenting his work/butting in when its not helpful.

D) Also a lack of knowledge on hosting internally/linux makes me think that I could not secure it down properly.

[webman]

Interested if you use MS AD for your workplace / school computers?

Yes, network is primarily Windows 2000/2003 servers with XP clients (RM CC3) and everything integrates perfectly.

[dinsyboy]

We use exclusively hosted services for email & websites:

1) e-mail accounts are Gmail for Education accounts (up to 1000) - this works really well as we are using the shared calendaring features & shared docs too across staff, although no individual chn have e-mails within the school (class & year group only) as we're a Primary school.

2) Website - hosted; again we have a small operation and to keep load off internal server. We found a great host in TSOhost recently and have been pleased with the level of customer service and after care.

HTH.

Lewis