Taming the alpha mail

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Vegas Nights plays its vCards right

One of the often-mentioned benefits of hosted e-mail is the fact that it gives even the smallest company access to a full-featured suite of messaging applications. For two-man operation Vegas Nights, this promise has turned into a business-changing advantage after recently adopting a managed Microsoft Exchange service from TPP Internet.

Vegas Nights is in the business of gaming, renting out poker, blackjack, and roulette tables -- as well as professional croupiers to run them -- for corporate events. Business is good, so employees spend much of their time out of the office, meeting with clients, setting up and taking down their gear, travelling interstate, and taking bookings from wherever they happen to be.

In the past, both workers had shared single instances of Microsoft Outlook, jumping between machines when they needed to make new bookings or check e-mail. This arrangement soon grew tiresome, said director David Sellar, and Exchange was a clear option -- but he also soon realised that such a small company had no hope of running its own Exchange server.

"Because of the nature of the business, there are only two of us and we both wear different hats all the time," he explained. "We were constantly working off the same calendar and trying to use each other's contacts. It was just a pain having to jump onto each other's computers the whole time, and we wanted a way that we wouldn't have to keep knocking each other off of the computers. When the hosted Exchange idea came up, it looked quite simple."

Migrating to the TPP offering proved as simple as expected, and the pair were soon up and running with the hosted Exchange server. Three mailboxes allow each of the two to have their own e-mail inbox -- which is accessible from either computer or on the road -- and a third mailbox serves as a dropbox for all general Vegas Nights e-mail. The two can also share the same customer contact information, avoiding the need to jump between computers or use contact sharing methods like vCard.

Sellar also maintains a fourth inbox for his other business, iDrive, an online backup service that is far less phone-intensive and far more e-mail-intensive. Adding an account for iDrive to the TPP offering was straightforward, with access to the information restricted to Sellars.

"Even though we're quite a small company, we've got a complicated set-up with regards to customers," he explained. "This managed service has allowed me to access certain services and others not."

The pair have made extensive use of the fact that managed Exchange offers a single shared calendar, which is essential to prevent double-booking of limited business assets. With both Outlook and Web-based services providing access to the same calendar information no matter where they travel, the pair can confidently schedule resources without worrying about conflicts.

Offloading e-mail has also allowed the two to keep their information synchronised with their smartphones and HP iPaqs, ensuring the data is accessible all the time and can be readily synchronised to stay current.

"In the past, the only way we could do all of this was through Windows Terminal Services [remote access]," said Sellars. "But for that to work, you had to make sure the computer was on back at the office, and of course there was a bit of a security issue there. Now, our computers don't even need to be on."