You should have received just before Christmas an email from Applied Systems to notify you of there decision to retire their Hosted Exchange services. This could have a significant impact on your brokerage relying on these services.
Not to worry thou there is plenty of time to move off the Applied Systems Hosted Exchange platform to Office 365, we can ensure a seamless transfer to this new service with next to no disruption to your email.
Why are they retiring Applied Systems Hosted Exchange ?
For many years Applied Systems provided email for brokers using a product called Microsoft Exchange. Exchange is an email server provided by Microsoft and used at the time by most large enterprise organisations. For the last few years many large organisations have swapped from Exchange servers to Office 365 as it provides far better collaboration tools and has less server management. Applied have to maintain there Hosted Exchange product and have skilled engineers, we have seen brokers over the last 6 months constantly complain about the reliability of the email system. There have also been reports of emails not getting through to Insurers. Rather than move brokers to a more modern alternative they have decided to step away from email and concentrate on where the specialties lie in providing a reliable Insurance brokerage system.
Check out the recent update from Applied Systems to learn more about there discontinuation of the Applied Hosted Exchange
How will it affect my brokerage ?
Receiving the email does not mean the service will be immediately turned off, you have a little time to review your options. The first step is to check if it applies to your business, as it is a service included and not charged separately it will not appear on your invoice. You can check what is called your MX record using a website such as MX Toolbox enter your domain name and if it shows anything like smtp.appliedexch.co.uk then you will be affected.
If you are using Applied Hosted Exchange, you will need to move all your data off there servers before the deadline and pick a new email provider. We recommend Microsoft Office 365 as it has become an industry leader for email and communication tools, although you could look at GSuite. Microsoft 365 can be used to replace servers, deliver security solutions cloud desktops and help you meet compliance requirements.
We are here to help
Mat and Steve and the team from Commercial Networks have been working with brokers throughout the UK for many years. You may remember them from SSP / Sirius days when they were working there. Since then they created Commercial Networks over 10 years ago to aid insurance brokers in the IT journey. Having knowledge of Acturis , Pure Broking and Applied allows us to better assist brokers with there IT requirements and planning. With a strong focus on cyber security we make sure that the managed it service we offer focuses on ensuring all brokers are as secure as they can be, this includes things such as employee training on cyber risks, mail filtering and end point protection. Hackers never sleep so we can offer our 24×7 SOC team to monitor Microsoft Office 365 tenancy’s around the clock.
Book some time with Mat or Steve here so we can start helping your insurance brokerage plan for the change.
If you are already using Microsoft Office 365 and your curious on how secure it is, need to increase your secure score or your cyber policy has certain requirements then contact us today
