The Sikh Geek

Many small businesses view having a server as something you only run as some large corporate company. Microsoft Windows Small Business Server is designed for small companies and we’ve successfully deployed it in organisations with less than 5 users.

However, what if you are just 1 or 2 people and want some of the features that SBS 2003 can give you but don’t want the cost of deploying and managing hardware, is there an alternative? The answer is yes! A good option in this scenario is to look at hosted Exchange/Sharepoint accounts with providers such as OneAndOne. These allow you to have all the facilities of Exchange Server (shared calendars, contacts, folders and synchronisation with mobile devices) with you running Outlook 2003 on your desktop. If you combine this with Sharepoint Services hosted account, then you’re away with document sharing, collaborative working, document management and more.

I like OneAndOne’s services, they are excellent and affordable. A hosted Exchange account is £7.09 (inc vat) per month per user and a hosted Sharepoint account is £17.61 (inc vat) per month with support for up to 50 users! Now that’s a bargain as it comes to £296.40 (inc vat) per year to get some real enterprise class features and work remotely in a small team. It also helps when you want to transition to a server because you’re already using the same feature set.