thaight's blog

Why We Believe Our Version of Hosted Exchange Is Better than Gmail

Submitted by thaight on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 21:58

OK, let’s get the transparency thing over with first. We offer hosted Microsoft Exchange, and we’d love you all to buy it. We have reasons, however, why we believe Exchange, backed up by our personal service, is a better way to go. After all, even folks with an interest in an issue can be right. So here’s our take on Gmail versus hosted Exchange with our service, in the context of a nonprofit looking for the best hosted solution to replace Exchange on their local server.

CGNET Blogs Now Available via Email

Submitted by thaight on Thu, 10/28/2010 - 20:12

You can now receive new content from CGNET through the Feed by Email feature, available on any page. Just enter your email address, and Google's FeedBurner will set up the connection is a couple of quick steps. That's all there is to it!

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Time to Consider Outsourcing?

Too busy taming lions to get your strategic planning done?

Here are ten reasons to outsource to CGNET

1. Peace of Mind

What you don’t want, and what your management definitely doesn’t want, are unpleasant surprises. The email shouldn’t go down. You should be able to recover smoothly from disaster. Everything should be backed up. CGNET understands that. We take responsibility for keeping your systems flourishing. You can relax.

2. Good Company

The best proof that nonprofits and foundations have found peace of mind outsourcing to CGNET is who and how many of them there are. The answer is “lots.” Here’s a partial list (link). A significant number of these have been with us for more than 10 years. And we’ve been in business for 27 years. During that time , almost all of our customers have been nonprofits, intergovernmental organizations and foundations (The others arepeople you used to work for one of our customers). When you work with us, you’re in good company.

3. We’re Here for You

Not only do we care for your systems and data 24/7/365, we have live telephone, email or IM support available all the time. If the technician on duty can’t resolve your issues, we have fast escalation, as far up the command chain as necessary to get the job done fast. We’re a smaller, nimble company. You don’t get lost in bureaucracy.

4. Your Budget

Outsourcing can save you money. This can happen in lots of ways, from reducing the time you spend on caring for your IT to providing less expensive technology than you’re using now. We’d love to talk about this in terms of your particular needs.

5. Personal Attention

In addition to our 24/7 service, we assign particular people to your account. You know who to call to resolve any issue, and you know that person will put your concerns at the top of the list.

6. Understanding

In those 27 years we’ve been serving nonprofits, we’ve learned a lot about how you operate, from the time it takes to reach a consensus, all the way to the specific technologies you use (GIFTS, FoundationPower, FIMS, Dotche, Blackbaud, SharePoint, Exchange…whatever). We’ve found that we fit easily into the organizational rhythms and concerns of organizations like yours, wherever in the world you’re located.

7. Selection

We are vendor neutral, and we have lots of alternatives to offer you, in the search for the perfect solution. We also provide consulting, regardless of whether you use our managed services.

8. Reliability

This is our watchword. While Service Level Agreements are good, and ours are among the best, they don’t help a lot while a service is down. The key is to keep things running and not to lose data. Making this happen requires a commitment to quality. We believe our commitment to reliability sets us apart and that our list of long-time references proves it.

9. You're the Boss

No “one size fits all” solutions from us. We customize things to fit exactly what you need and arrange our services to fit the routines you want. And we do it with a smile.

10. And did we mention Peace of Mind?

This is worth saying twice. We take care of things so you don’t have to, all day, all night. If something goes wrong, we hop on it, fix it if you want us to, and notify you immediately. No unpleasant surprises.

CGNET Cloud Plus Services

We’ve been providing Cloud-based services since our inception in 1983, though of course it wasn’t called Cloud then. We’ve served hundreds of happy clients in more than a hundred countries. Cloud Plus services give you peace of mind, through personalized, responsive, reliable service 24/7/365.

Cloud Plus: Microsoft Exchange

CGNET provides cloud-based Microsoft Exchange which means:

· Freeing up IT staff for mission-critical assignments.

· Lower cost

· Higher reliability

· An embedded Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solution.

Clients have hosted mailboxes for all staff, eliminating the need to run and maintain Exchange servers. Cost avoidance is obtained by eliminating the need to purchase and maintain physical servers, by eliminating staff time for patches, hot fixes and crisis management of servers, and by lower costs for air conditioning, electricity and floor space.

Our service is provided via multiple Microsoft Exchange 2010 servers in geographically separate locations with replication of roles (CAS, hub transport, mailbox, etc.). This assures near-zero downtime, and provides full disaster recovery capability.

Our design includes sets of servers in two locations. Primary and secondary sites are Tier 3 co-location facilities with UPS and generator backup, 24/7 security on site, multiple Internet connections, etc. At any given time, mail databases are replicated on multiple servers, and a daily backup is made and retained for four weeks. It is unlikely that backup/restore would be needed, but it is added as an extra protection.

Cloud Plus: Email Archiving

CGNET provides best-in-class cloud-based archiving, with service for individual users to access their archived messages as well as a console where authorized staff can search for and access email across the organization. Notably, our service provides replication of each user’s set of private folders in the archive. The Outlook-like browser-based client shows a directory structure identical to what the user sees in Outlook. Meanwhile, the service is entirely managed in the cloud, and your designated CGNET team is available 24/7/365 to provide support.

Cloud Plus: Online Backup for Laptops, Servers, and Desktops

CGNET provides disk-to-disk backup of servers, workstations and laptops over the Internet. The service provides de-duplication and compression to reduce what is stored by 50 percent. Individual files are instantly retrievable through a friendly Windows-like directory interface. We also offer service at client offices, which is then backed up to the Internet, to provide the fastest recovery time combined with off-site storage. The service is easy to set up and use, secure and reliable, and surprisingly inexpensive. Like all of our services, your designated account team is always available to assist you.

Here is a list of links to descriptions of all our other services: