Live@edu vs. Exchange?

[jamesbmarshall]

It's more the case for me of comparing the online vs. local in terms of what's best. I'm still thinking it's the latter for control reasons, despite the additional cost, and swayed by some of the views above about Live.edu.

 

Aside from the ability to access your Exchange server even when your Internet connection is down (something that would be a problem for every 'cloud' service) what are the features of on-prem Exchange that you feel are must-haves that aren't offered by Live@edu?

 

Regarding the offline access point - realistically how often is your Internet connection down during work hours? Out of hours outages (i.e. on a snow day, for example, when people need access from home) are more likely to have a bigger impact, in which case a cloud service is an ideal way to ensure continuity of communications, whether that's email, IM or document storage.

Edited November 9, 2011 by jamesbmarshall
Spelling

[CyberNerd]

Regarding the offline access point - realistically how often is your Internet connection down during work hours? Out of hours outages (i.e. on a snow day, for example, when people need access from home) are more likely to have a bigger impact, in which case a cloud service is an ideal way to ensure continuity of communications, whether that's email, IM or document storage.

 

This is an important point. When we planned our move to cloud services we offset the ongoing maintenance, licensing and upgrades of exchange vs upgrading our broadband link. We ended up ditching the LA's offering for a 30Mb/s connection on 100Mb/s bearer which had a 99.96% SLA (cashback for downtime and included ADSL backup), this actually saved us £900 p/a without the savings made on internally hosting the email server.

[zag]

We moved from a local exchange server to Live@edu 6 months ago.

 

Couldn't be happier really, its amazing having email just work instead of maintaining a server.

 

As already mentioned its ridiculously hard to do single sign on but as most of our teachers use outlook client which saves the login details its not really a problem for them.

 

The students have to sign in each time but they have got used to that now and not had a single complaint. Infact it makes it much easier because its the same process to sign on inside school as outside.

 

The 10gb storage, 99.9% uptime, virus scanning, and general ease of use make it well worth doing.

 

I seriously doubt in a couple of years time anyone will be running their own exchange server. Its like running a nuclear power station in your basement to heat your house

[SYNACK]

I seriously doubt in a couple of years time anyone will be running their own exchange server. Its like running a nuclear power station in your basement to heat your house

How do you make that comparison, I get this responce sometimes and I just don't understand. Exchange is a snap, what are these issues people have with it?

[teejay]

How do you make that comparison, I get this responce sometimes and I just don't understand. Exchange is a snap, what are these issues people have with it?

 

Agreed, once it's up and running it's very low maintenance. Initial setup can be a bit daunting, but there are some very good step by step guides out there.

It really depends on how you're going to use it as to the choice between exchange and live@edu, for us it really is a mission critical form of communication during the school day for staff, so we run staff email on our own virtualised exchange servers. Student email isn't so critical, so that's on live@edu, partly because we lock it down on domains they can send/receive to/from which I find easier to manage on live@edu.

[CyberNerd]

Agreed, once it's up and running it's very low maintenance. Initial setup can be a bit daunting, but there are some very good step by step guides out there. It really depends on how you're going to use it as to the choice between exchange and live@edu, for us it really is a mission critical form of communication during the school day for staff, so we run staff email on our own virtualised exchange servers. Student email isn't so critical, so that's on live@edu, partly because we lock it down on domains they can send/receive to/from which I find easier to manage on live@edu..

 

 

I didn't find exchange too bad to set up back in the day, I assume it's got more complicated since 2007 though. I did find that I had to dedicate time to maintenance in terms of upgrades, checking backups etc. I just found that my time is better spent supporting Teaching and Learning. I don't believe schools need dedicated email servers these days and if there are perceived worries about internet connectivity then these issues should be addressed before spending money on servers and cals. Internet connectivity is at least as mission critical to a school in terms of teaching and learning as its communication system is and having a backup with a decent SLA is important whether or not an email or offsite document/photo/whatever system is included. There is a fair chance that Google/MS engineers are competent enough to keep their systems running and if they don't, frankly I'm not going to get it in the neck because I've not been spending unnecessary time reading log files. I'm nearly two years running google apps now and the support has been great, I've saved time and I've saved money and get the added bonus of being able to deliver applications to students home computers and mobiles. Go for exchange if you've already decided your going to; it's great for learning things that you probably won't need in the future.

[SYNACK]

Internet connectivity is at least as mission critical to a school in terms of teaching and learning as its communication system is and having a backup with a decent SLA is important whether or not an email or offsite document/photo/whatever system is included.

 

Pfft. we run a school, not an internet cafe. Its rather a sign of weakness if a teacher can't actually teach and relies on the internet to do it for them. If you are tying every single thing, including all your internal communications to somewhere a few thousand kms away you're doing it wrong.

[CyberNerd]

Pfft. we run a school, not an internet cafe. Its rather a sign of weakness if a teacher can't actually teach and relies on the internet to do it for them. If you are tying every single thing, including all your internal communications to somewhere a few thousand kms away you're doing it wrong.

 

Back in the UK; exam boards and content providers, even catering services, are rapidly migrating to hosted services. If we had no internet we'd not have students registered for exams, or even do online exams. We'd not have access to hosted learning resources, we couldn't even pay our BACS bills or report data to our local authority. I appreciate things in the former colonies are done differently but internet connectivity is quite important in our school.

[SYNACK]

Back in the UK; exam boards and content providers, even catering services, are rapidly migrating to hosted services. If we had no internet we'd not have students registered for exams, or even do online exams. We'd not have access to hosted learning resources, we couldn't even pay our BACS bills or report data to our local authority. I appreciate things in the former colonies are done differently but internet connectivity is quite important in our school.

 

I am going to laugh my ass off when there is a random mass extinction event in the UK because some magical bulletproof cloud based door control system falls off the grid and everyone is trapped in their offices. One day a BT engineer is going to trip over a cable and be responcible for the deaths of hundreds.

 

To much reliance is a bad thing, it leads to complete dependance at which point you should just sack all the teachers and hire child minders at a lower rate to point them to the real educators, sadly Youtube an flashgames (by volume).

[CyberNerd]

I am going to laugh my ass off when there is a random mass extinction event in the UK because some magical bulletproof cloud based door control system falls off the grid and everyone is trapped in their offices. One day a BT engineer is going to trip over a cable and be responcible for the deaths of hundreds.

 

Luckily, our school was built in the 1950's as dual purpose so that it would double as a hospital in times of nuclear war. Luckily it escaped BSF and still has stupidly thick walls and corridors wide enough to drive a truck down. We'd just survive a BT engineer tripping up a cable on failover - but not if the local exchange went down. At the end of the day ( I go to bed, I hate that expression but found myself using it) I need to weigh up the chances of that happening against the probability of things that could happen on-site, against the 'blame' factor - and if that does happen 'its not my fault!, I took these mitigating steps!'

[zag]

How do you make that comparison, I get this responce sometimes and I just don't understand. Exchange is a snap, what are these issues people have with it?

 

Using our old local exchange server I've lost count of the hours I've spent looking at log files, stopping relay servers, reaching file store limits, backing up every weekend, stopping spam, working out licensing, paying for licensing, checking blacklists, applying service packs, applying patches, snapshotting hyper-v, fixing broken webmail, allowing file extensions on webmail, fixing zip files on webmail.... this list goes on.

 

Since we have had live@edu I've done exactly 0 hours work on the backend The only task I do is adding new users with a csv or even via the web interface. Takes 2mins.

 

Anyway to say i'm impressed is an understatement

[SYNACK]

Using our old local exchange server I've lost count of the hours I've spent looking at log files, stopping relay servers, reaching file store limits, backing up every weekend, stopping spam, working out licensing, paying for licensing, checking blacklists, applying service packs, applying patches, snapshotting hyper-v, fixing broken webmail, allowing file extensions on webmail, fixing zip files on webmail.... this list goes on.

 

What version was that though, 2000. I may have been lucky but the only major issues I have had with Exchange have been caused by NOD32 or the hash job that was SBS. Sure there were a couple of SPs that ended up needing a little cleaning up after but short of that if you have it set to automaticlly backup it does give you a huge featureset for very little effort.

[CyberNerd]

The only task I do is adding new users with a csv or even via the web interface. Takes 2mins.

 

 

Google apps does that automatically from your active directory :-)

[jamesbmarshall]

Google apps does that automatically from your active directory :-)

 

So can Live@edu - with ILM or FIM!

[SYNACK]

Google apps does that automatically from your active directory :-)

 

You can do that with Live@edu too, its just the app is not free ($80 or so), as @RabbieBurns they have it setup.

[zag]

So can Live@edu - with ILM or FIM!

 

You forgot to add you need a degree in nuclear physics to get it installed

[SYNACK]

You forgot to add you need a degree in nuclear physics to get it installed

 

Seriously, when did everything become so hard. Since when did installing anything become as complex as splitting the atom in a controlled fashion. I'm guessing that some people have been using their iPads a touch to long and their brains have atrophied.