2 Gb - Email Hosting 2.0?

PRWEB - January 22, 2007 - Global leader in Microsoft Exchange hosting, Internedia.Net, announced the world's first hosted Exchange service plans. The plans will include 2 gigabyte mail boxes, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Good Mobile Messaging. The release is the very first complete-hosted Exchange 2007 service.

The service has the capability of Exchange 2007 plus 2 gigabytes of mail storage space. This follows a media trend to provide virtually unlimited storage capacity for mail and messaging servers. Intermedia.Net provides free, instant Outlook 2007 downloads for their customers with instant search capability via Outlook 2007. The search function is supposed to be much faster and more flexible than any previous Outlook version.  

“By offering our customers the Microsoft-recommended two gigabytes of mailbox storage, we have once again shown our leadership in our market and our commitment to giving our customers the best hosted Exchange experience available,” said Serguei Sofinski, CEO of Intermedia.NET.

The Exchange host is now the 1^st to offer a complete package of outlook capability including ActiveSync, Blackberry and Good Mobile integrated aspects. The 2 GB mailboxes are available to all Exchange customers with 10 or more users. The plans start as low as $125 a month with 10 mailboxes.

Web 2.0?

I don't think it will be in a few months! With all the free mail sites bumping up their services to 1 gigabyte, and all the technology companies providing Blackberry, iPhone, and other accessibility, paying $125 a month as a small business might be a little steep. $12.50 a month for that many services would have sounded great 6 month ago, I am just not sure it will in 3 more months. This is indicative of the trend towards enabling user's greater access and space across the whole spectrum of communications and web interconnectivity platforms. Gmail, Spymac, and many others currently offer 1 GB of free space. 2 GB of space is quite a lot combined with all the Exchange features, but I believe in the long term only larger corporations would lay out large sums for such a service. Larger companies actually get a little better break, with 50 mailboxes at 2 GB each for $575 per month.

Expect to see additional features from Intermedia once the larger dogs pick up the bone. The advanced features Intermedia is offering are impressive, and we are seeing the first giant email storage equipped to suit space hungry applications. Personally, Exchange and Outlook are advanced but aging programs. They offer great characteristics, but if nothing else we should have seen the names change by now. Seriously, Microsoft has changed the name and look of virtually everything else in the repertoire, isn't it time for Outlook? I am glad to see companies offering more for less, but we need to be able to compare true value in this market as it is sure to heat up soon!