PEER 1 Hosting offers Microsoft Hosted Exchange to Small and Medium
Businesses

Customers can now outsource all IT infrastructure including email hosting

VANCOUVER, July 20 /CNW/ - International managed hosting provider (http://www.peer1hosting.co.uk/hosting), PEER 1 Hosting, today announced its relationship with Microsoft Corp to offer customers fully featured, enterprise-level email services. In addition to the PEER 1 hosting services, this will deliver a cost-effective, immediate and hassle-free way of managing SMB customer mail environments.

PEER 1's hosted Microsoft Exchange solution is scalable, secure and full-featured, giving users the ability to easily collaborate without them having to invest in mail servers, software licenses, security, or be involved with ongoing system administration. Users can share and access calendars, tasks, contacts, public folders, groups and global address books as well as synchronize from their desktop, mobile device, and the Web. The packages start from $10 USD per mailbox per month, making it suitable for companies of every size and budget with bulk discounts available.

The hosted Microsoft Exchange solution will be deployed through a web-based automation platform to make managing the mail accounts easier, with customers being able to administer users and feature benefits. Each mailbox will have three Gigabytes of storage, which will be pooled space on a per customer basis. Users will be safeguarded through McAfee(TM) SaaS Email Protection which works outside the network to block more than 99 percent of spam, viruses, worms and harmful content. Customers email data will be protected with multiple daily backups and a 14 day free-of-charge file recovery capability.

Hosting customers will be able to benefit from PEER 1's cutting edge technology with its 10Gb SuperNetwork(TM) backbone that delivers faster performance, low latency and no single point of failure. In addition, customers will benefit from outstanding customer support due to 24x7x365 FirstCall Support(TM), ensuring a high class of service levels.

As Tim Varma, Vice President of Product Development at PEER 1 Hosting comments, "Customers want an easy and cost-efficient way of managing their IT infrastructure, inclusive of email services. With our business class email packages, customers no longer need to provide or manage their own mail servers, backups, licensing or security. It is engineered to save customers time, effort and costs whilst offering unrivalled PEER 1 service and support."

"Businesses are increasingly interested in communication and collaboration tools to improve productivity and reduce costs," comments John Zanni, General Manager of worldwide hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. "By offering hosted Microsoft Exchange as a service, PEER 1 Hosting is able to provide attractive IT options to its customers."

PEER 1 Hosting will be offering Microsoft Hosted Exchange via its site from 20 July. To get further information and purchase the system please visit:

http://www.peer1.com/hosting/business-class-email.php

Notes to editors

About PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world's leading IT hosting providers. The company is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetwork(TM) connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and 10 colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers worldwide, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support(TM). PEER 1's portfolio includes Managed Hosting (http://www.peer1.com/hosting/), Dedicated Servers (http://www.serverbeach.com/servers/) under the ServerBeach (http://www.serverbeach.com/) brand, Colocation (http://www.peer1.com/hosting/) and Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.serverbeach.com or www.peer1.com

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

For further information: For North American inquiries please contact Marcela Peake at PEER 1 Hosting, [phone], [email protected]; For European media inquiries please contact Champion Communications [phone], [email protected]