Love or hate it the world runs on emails and CC'ing as many people as possible to seem important. We used to host our own Exchange server from the early NT days to 2003(ish). This gave maximum flexibility and configuration for your organisation. The downside was a continuous battle with virus ridden mails and spam as well as backing up those mailboxes (exmerge anyone?). So the solution? It's lazy but in simple terms let it be someone else's problem and use a hosted exchange service. When we made the move the cloud was a not a popular term but that is basically what it is.

Email and messaging capabilities are so critical, they are just as almost vital as gas, electricity and running water. The goals of a hosted service are to ensure that service remains available as close to 100% of the time as possible while at the same time being affordable. For many organizations, managing email internally is a thing of the past just like faxing (you don't send faxes do you??)

Some of the benefits of this are as follows:
<ol>
 	<li>Expert, technically certified support staff available 24x7</li>
 	<li>Cloud migration teams to securely transition the information from your on-premise servers the cloud Exchange host</li>
 	<li>Control of your services and security options using a web-based control panel and mobile app</li>
 	<li>Support for email, calendar and contacts on virtually any smartphone or tablet device as well as desktop client</li>
 	<li>Enterprise grade security in world-class datacenters</li>
 	<li>99% (or better)  uptime service level agreements</li>
 	<li>Does not affect your own servers bandwidth</li>
 	<li>Maintenance(spam and virus updates and backups) all handled by professionals.</li>
</ol>
Most of all the use of a hosted Exchange service allows an in-house IT staff to be deployed to other projects, they really have better things to be doing.

Hosted Exchange has been offered for years by a growing number of providers around the world. There are roughly 200 providers of hosted Exchange services worldwide, although these vendors vary widely in terms of their capabilities, the number of users they support, the services they provide, their pricing, etc. A lot of providers don't stop at Exchange and will often host Office in the cloud, Sharepoint etc.

As a little tip, look for a host with a datacenter in your region there may be legal and speed issued if they are hosted elsewhere.

Sample Hosted Exchange providers:
<ul>
 	<li><a href="https://products.office.com/en-gb/exchange/exchange-online" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://www.rackspace.co.uk/email-apps/email-hosting/microsoft-exchange/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rackspace</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://www.hostedexchange.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hostedexchange</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://www.intermedia.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Intermedia</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://www.cobweb.com/hosted-services/hosted-exchange.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cobweb</a></li>
</ul>
One honourable option not mentioned is Google Mail, plenty of business potential there but personally I am a big fan of Exchange and Outlook.