I think BPOS is great from a user end.  The administration end needs a lot of work.  Currently most of the admin fungtions take raising a ticket.  I am testing blackberry and I have no visibility at all.  There should be a better administration portal.

I am contracting for a Small Business who is now going to need both an Exchange solution and an in-house File and Print server.  Prior to the advent of the cloud and various Exchange hosting providers, I would just install a Small Business Server that offers File and Print server roles as well as Sharepoint and Exchange, and be done with it.  However, with BPOS I can now offer them not only Exchange and Sharepoint, but also Office Communications Server for a decent price per user per month.

Here is my dilemma:

For a customer that still needs an in-house File and Print Server, would it make more sense to just purchase Small Business Server 2008?  Or, perhaps I should just go with BPOS and an in-house Server 2008 box that allows me things like Terminal Services?  What are other small businesses in this same situation doing?  What would you do for a small business on a budget that needs to stretch a dollar but still have a technical edge?

Jason Hillman, MCP

Applied Facts

jhillman@appliedfacts.com

We are trialling BPOS at present, and are currently in coexistence.  We have stalled as we're having trouble with accessing BPOS via a terminal server (RDP) connection.  The performance when opening Outlook and using mail is much worse than if we use our in house exchange server via RDP.  There is confusing advice ranging from "MS doesn't support RDP on BPOS" to "use Outlook 2010 in cached mode on the terminal server", which is counter intuitive.  Are there other real world experiences of BPOS via RDP?

Our experience with BPOS is mixed. While we like having the site hosted, the requirement to install the MS Online Services sign-in app has presented problems. Some of our team members work from home, and we also have clients who want a site similar to a Board of Directors site with team members in different companies. This presents a problem because some users need Exchange and others don't. There's no option for a mixture of these types of users. We've also experienced login issues for Windows 7 users and slow response in calendars, especially when switching from email to calendar view and viewing multiple calendars. I also have to agree with Lee's comment above that the admin options need to be improved.