Outlook Exchange Branch Office WAN

[Fluff]

Has anyone had any experience with...


Cemaphore Systems - Mail Shadow

https://www.cemaphore.com

It looks like a good solution to branch offices getting e-mail form a centralised Exchange server, over piddly frame relay connections.

[Paulr]

Not yet - however we're in the process of opening a small Hong Kong office and wanted them to get their e-mail from the Exchange Server based in the UK.
However there is only a 2MB VPN tunnel linking the sites together.

I'm getting the evaluation version of the software you've listed within the next week - you get an unlimited user, 60 day trial version so we'll see how it goes.
From the description it would appear to offer everything we need - and it's not often that something like that happens.
If it works half as well as they say it does then we'll be removing our Exchange server from our small Atlanta office as well and both the HK & US offices can collect their mail via the UK Exchange Server/mailshadow combination.

[Fluff]

Yep ours is a 10 user connecting to another Exchange server I think 5.5 / 2000 ,Outlook 2002 clients.in the UK over a 512 / 256 ADSL. Average ping 200ms. So I hope it works too.

[Paulr]

Just faxed over my Evaluation Agreement and I've been told I'll get download locations and keys sent through to me later.

They have an interesting licensing/pricing structure.
It works out at $68 per user per year - there is no actual cost for the "Mailshadow cache server".
Of course you do need a Windows 2000/2003 server to run the software on and each user using the cache obviously needs a CAL to access the server.
Apparently you do also still need to buy an Exchange CAL for each user too.

It should still work out cheaper than rolling out a dedicated Exchange server and also, certainly from my point of view, it's a lot easier having our two Exchange servers sat in a server room the other side of the building than it would be to have 2 here, 1 in Atlanta and 1 in Hong Kong.

I've spoken to a couple of people at Cemephore now and they are a nice bunch of people.
Hopefully I'm going to start my evaluation at the beginning of next week so I'll report back then.