Here’s a link for you to compare Google Apps and Hosted Exchange

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value.html

These are the main selling points.

• Email accounts with 25 GB of storage per user and instant search tools

In my employment history, the max limit i seem email storage space for a CEO is 500MB and that is considered a very high capacity. It’s quite impossible to provide 1GB to each user. The higher storage capacity given to a user. Means that you have to backup more. When their email needs to be sync and loaded when they view the email. If they are using BlackBerry it’s worst. When they have to set rules to either keep the server or the BlackBerry as a master.

That’s why companies encourage users to save their email locally.   

• IM, plus voice and video chat

From my understanding, some companies do not allow instance messaging within  the organizations. Instant messaging applications such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger (able to sync) are the types of communication. This is because they are unable to trace the logs of every conversation. The logs will take up many spaces.  Well, it’s quite time wasting when you have to send a email to ask about something. You have to CC the relevant people just to make sure the information gets passed around. People call this “covering your ass”

• Group calendaring system

With a constant public shared calendar, you can share this to your vendors also. They are not restricted to viewing for internal staff only.

• Mobile access

Who needs to subscribe for a BlackBerry server and BlackBerry phone just to view secure emails. Almost everyone today have a smart phone with data plan. Although some business like that banking industry still hosts their own applications and be limited the types of out sourcing due to the fact they are holding customers confidential data information.

• Spam and virus filtering

With a comprehensive spam and virus filtering they have in place. For business, you do not need to purchase the server and licenses. In addition, you do not need to subscribe for spam and virus filtering firewall and license subscription.

• Web-powered collaboration apps: Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video for businesses

With Google Docs you can share, view and edit documents real-time. Even when someone is editing the documents real-time. One thing they are missing is the function similar as WebEX that allows you to call in a toll free number go group meeting. Well with Google voice you can do it also.

• Better uptime and reduce cost for hosting and maintaining it during off-peak hours.

Well who can guarantee how much down time you minimise for your organization? You do have a specialize team to standby 24/7 to monitor. That’s why some organization prefers to outsource their mail hosting to a external partner.

I have covered using Google Email Fetcher to fetch all your other email accounts mail to be fetch using Gmail.

Using this can effectively reduce the amount of spam and phishing scams.

Talk about having a good email spam filter with phishing protection.