"I've been lucky enough to be an early-adopter of Blacknight's "Hosted Exchange" Service. Always one for new things, but always cautious in my own way, I backed up my iPhone's Calendar and Address Book and set about configuring my new service.
It was a joy to see just how quickly and smoothly everything went. In under 10 minutes I was up and running and trying out the new features. The administration interface (Blacknight's new "Control Panel") is extremely easy to navigate, and the Outlook Web Access is every bit as good as you'd expect -and fast too!
What I really wanted to try though was the push-based Exchange-Mail integration with my iPhone. The only way to describe it is "It Just Works!!!". Setup on the iPhone was a doddle - I was amused to see the iPhone try and validate my account when I hadn't entered in the server details yet (some kind of Apple voodoo I suspect), but seconds later I was presented with the pre-request server field in the configuration window. Playing with the Calendar and Address Book I was surprised to find that the iPhone maintains a completely separate Calendar and Address Book for the Exchange-Mail service - looks like my backups were superfluous after-all!
Combine all this with the included Outlook 2007 desktop software plus ActiveSync, and their friendly responsive professional support staff, Blacknight's Hosted Exchange brings the features and benefits of a secure, scalable, feature-rich email solution out of the enterprise and within reach of the home user - all the time scaling to meet all your business needs!"
- Andrew Barnes
