Welcome to the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration version 4.5. The solution can enable service providers to extend their subscriber base and increase profitability through offering rich e-mail, mobility, collaboration, and messaging services.

Hosted Exchange is a rich messaging service you host using Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1). The target market for Hosted Exchange includes small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs), small office/home office (SOHO) businesses. With tools for flexible business modeling, you can offer a broad range of services that go from basic e-mail up to higher value services, such as providing additional storage, hosting personal domains, and calendars.

Collaboration services enable users in your customer organizations to work together more efficiently. Version 4.5 of the solution provides Windows SharePoint Services Hosting, which allows you to host team Web sites for customers to use for sharing documents and other information.

Version 4.5 of the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration can enable service providers to offer the widest range of messaging services, starting with a basic, e-mail-only Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) client experience, and then adding incremental functionality in multiple OWA feature bundles up to a full Microsoft Outlook client that will run over the Internet through existing firewalls and routing infrastructure. This range of services will provide a flexible services path to drive incremental upsell value for every mailbox provisioned on the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration platform.

Version 4.5 of the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration also includes collaboration through the service enablement of MS Office Communications Server 2007 for PC to PC calling services and web conferencing.

Note:
If you are planning to deploy Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, please see Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 and the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration for more information.

The Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5 documentation consists of the following five sections:

• Solution Overview - Briefly introduces new features of the solution, customer scenarios, and the reference architecture
  
• Solution Components - Contains in-depth planning information for each solution component
  
• Plan Your Service Offering - Provides high-level concepts you need to address when planning your service offering
  
• Deployment Walkthrough - Details the steps for deploying the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5 in a lab environment
  
• Operations and Staffing - Offers extensive information on working with your solution environment once it's deployed - including operations, risk management, disaster recovery, and best practices