Since October 2010, Microsoft has allowed a limited number of people to use its Office 365 beta, a cloud-hosted set of Office servers, enabling full use of all Office tools. Office 365 offers multi-tenanted versions of the Office family servers including Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Lync 2010.
The idea is not new – organizations have been asking for anywhere, anytime access to applications and services for a long time. Office 365 combines Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync in a unified cloud.
Easy to start – When users log in for the first time, users get shortcuts to the key services they want (Outlook Web Access for email and calendar, SharePoint, download to Lync client). There is no need to permanently use these shortcuts; Office 365 van easily be used from desktop tools (e.g., Outlook).
Lync – When using Lync, the whitelist option allows users to lock down conversations with trusted partners. Microsoft is working on enhancing this feature enabling online collaboration in Office 365. Office 365 currently offers IM, VoIP and video chat in the Lync 2010 client, as well as the ability to deliver slides to online meetings.
SharePoint and Exchange – Office 365’s SharePoint and Exchange implementation is straightforward, providing Access, Excel, and InfoPath services. It can also be used for some basic computing and storage. This opens a whole new set of challenges, including migration of existing data to the cloud. As DataMills, we are looking into reducing risks for such transitions.
We would like to conclude by saying that we don’t see Office 365 as a threat to IT professionals at all. Instead, we strongly feel that it will give organizations the tools to expand and also to protect their skilled IT staff from basic administration tasks.
DataMills Ltd. has added a new addition to its product suite. EdgeSafe File Backup software is an incremental file/folder backup solution to seamlessly and incrementally backup files. It provides enterprises with a managed backup solution for files that are located on their users’ laptops or desktops onto a central storage area, including local USB HDD. The solution backs up data files even when the Microsoft Office application is open.
EdgeSafe File Backup has the ability to backup data files that are located on the users’ workstations even if Office application is open. This ensures consistent and automatic backup. Since the backup is incremental, it can happen even while the user is working and since it is very light in resource usage, the user barely notices when the backup is running.
Other features include the ability to reduce the size of the backup. This is done by filtering out unwanted folders, and by allowing multiple one-pass recoverable versions without multiplying the backup space.
EdgeSafe File Backup is composed of EdgeSafe Control Station software and EdgeSafe File Backup Agent and is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000; Windows XP; Windows Vista; Windows 7. Every predefined period, EdgeSafe FileBackup Agent simply checks if the backup destination is available. Then it copies any file that had been created or changed since the last backup run into a secure, per user backup folder, which is located on a central backup/archive location.
Even in very large deployments EdgeSafe File Backup is able to perform even over low bandwidth lines, by staging the first full backup run, thus overcoming the network overload. It is also able to restrict the backup process to run only when the user is logged into its “home base network”. This feature helps mobile users avoiding a backup process while logged into the airport network for example.
Want to know more? Visit our website at www.datamills.com or contact us at info@datamills.com
The Radicati Group recently released its “Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook Market Analysis, 2011-2015” report. According to this study, Microsoft Exchange Server will have a worldwide installed base of over 360 million on-premises and hosted mailboxes by year-end 2011. On-Premises Microsoft Exchange Server deployments currently account for the majority of Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes worldwide, representing 76% of the worldwide installed base.
Why is Microsoft Office Outlook so popular? As an email client, it easily organizes virtual folders and enables fast search. It also has seamless integration with to-do lists and scheduling.
Furthermore, Microsoft Outlook is a great tool for e-mail marketing. Outlook 2010 offers various marketing tools, such as fast integration with Microsoft Word. It also enables to quickly import contacts from Excel as well as mail-merge functions that automate the process of sending out several hundred e-mails.
It is therefore essential for enterprises to protect the valuable data stored in Outlook files and folders. A robust backup and restore solution is the optimal way to backup PST files and folders, and – in case of a calamity – to restore lost data.
DataMills’ EdgeSafePST2PST is the preferred choice for many organizations. To quote a customer: “EdgeSafe PST2PST solves a problem not readily solvable in any other way. With email having become the major element in the communications suites of most firms, the issue of how to effectively backup the personal mail store (pst) has become a vexing problem.”
EdgeSafe PST2PST Backup is the leading PST backup solution for organizations. It swiftly and incrementally backs up PST files even if Microsoft® Outlook® is open. Features include simple native PST recovery, and central management for the PST file backup / Outlook Backup process.
Want to learn more? Contact us at sales@datamills.com for a free trial or click here.
Corporate users as well as home users prefer Microsoft Outlook as their default email client for sending and receiving mails. As we all know, Outlook has been around for a long time - even before the advance of web based email applications.
Microsoft Outlook is a local data store where the user emails/messages are stored. It is know as Personal Storage Table (PST). Backing up emails and folders in Outlook could comprise backing up the PST files. For enterprises, proper backup normally requires a magnitude of man hours as well as technical resources.
With this in mind, more and more enterprises opt for using DataMills’ EdgeSafe PST2PST backup solution. EdgeSafe PST2PST solution works is in a multi-tier way:
- The control station software (the core program that resides on server side)
- The PST2PST backup agent (this resides on individual user desktops)
- The central backup storage (this is where the files are backed up and it can be as small as a USB flash drive or as large as a SAN)
All backups are done in an incremental fashion with only the newer changes to files being backed up. This also translates in less bandwidth use and efficient use of network resources.
The role of each of the components is as follows:
- The Control Station - the central monitoring and management application.
It generates reports of the backups taken and sets up and displays alerts. It auto-creates a secure backup folder for each user managed and pushes different configurations for each of the PST2PST client (based on the groups they belong to). - The PST2PST Backup Agent - responsible for actual user- PSTs as per settings.
It can backup these files even while users are using Outlook. Therefore there is no need to close Outlook for backing up. It can split large-sized PST files (over 2 GB ) as well as backing up without taking too much of bandwidth. It then finally backs up various Outlook item types (calendars, contacts, emails etc) based on how the configuration is pushed from the control station. - The Central Backup Storage - depends on the environment where PST2PST is deployed.
For very small networks this can be a single desktop with large storage space. For large networks, this can be a full-fledged SAN. However, it is advisable that the server/system on which the Control Station is installed is not used as a central backup storage The reason for this is to eliminate single point of failure and to keep the load to a minimum.
In short, EdgeSafe PST2PST is a centrally managed enterprise solution that enables easy backup of individual user’s PST files without disrupting the daily work schedule of users. EdgeSafe PST2PST keeps the backups, monitors for changes and auto- updates backups in a secure and reliable way.
For a free trial or more information, contact DataMills at info@datamillis.com
Microsoft Outlook dominiert den Markt der E-Mail Clients, besonders im geschäftlichen Bereich. Trotzdem überzeugt die Software nicht in allen Bereichen, so fehlt etwa die Möglichkeit, Outlook-Daten zentral zu sichern und somit dem Datenverlust vorzubeugen.
Genau diese fehlende Komponente bietet EdgeSafe PST2PST Backup. Die Software ermöglicht die Sicherung der Outlook-Daten von mehreren Rechnern. Dabei werden die Daten im nativen Dateiformat .pst (Personal STore) gesichert. Dies garantiert eine reibungslose Wiederherstellung. Obwohl keine Komprimierung in ein anderes Dateiformat angewendet wird, wird die Datendatei trotzdem komprimiert – dazu können vordefinierte Ordner aus der Sicherung ausgeschlossen werden (Beispielsweise der Papierkorb oder ein Junk/Spam Ordner).
Ein weiterer Vorteil wird vom Hersteller Datamills in der Funktion des inkrementellen Backups vorgestellt. Dadurch wird weniger Speicherplatz benötigt, gleichzeitig aber für eine möglichst enge Backupdichte gesorgt. Die Backups werden von zentraler Stelle verwaltet und gespeichert, eine Berichtsansicht ist möglich.
Allerdings soll nicht nur eine Oberfläche zur Verwaltung zur Verfügung stehen, sondern auch eine Bedienmöglichkeit für Endbenutzer zur Wiederherstellung im Falle eines Datenverlusts. Dabei bleibt EdgeSafe PST2PST Backup jedoch im normalen Betrieb für den Endbenutzer kaum spürbar. Eine Beeinträchtigung des täglichen Arbeitens finde laut Hersteller durch den Backup-Prozess nicht statt.
Die Software ist in Lizenzpaketen ab 5 Endbenutzern verfügbar und kann mit allen Versionen von Microsoft Outlook ab Version 2000 benutzt werden, ausgeschlossen sind 64-bit Versionen.
(Ref: Mailhilfe.de)
