What is an exchange hosting service, anyway and how do I know whether I need one?

If you're like many small businesses today, you are probably expanding and working extensively on the Web to help your company grow.
Still not all businesses, especially when they are starting out, have the resources to employ a full IT team capable of maintaining the technical side of the company's e-mail and data management systems.
You already know your product or service. Why should you have to be an online hosting guru as well?
To put it simply, exchange hosting services provide many of the services companies might have once handled in-house with a large full-time IT staff, things like managing a branded e-mail system linked to their domain or even collaborative applications like planners and calendars.
Let's look at Hosting 101 from RackSpace.com and we can see that going with a hosted exchange takes many of the worries out of your hands, things like big investments and complicated decisions about hardware and data centers that could distract you from your primary focus: running your business.
As a result, you may want an outside provider to:
- Host your e-mail
- Manage and host your data
- Make it accessible to you through a variety of channels
In the end, the key to running a successful business is to do what you do best.