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What size environment?
Hosting these days can be very economical for small environments of under a few hundred users, given that number of features these companies are providing (Archiving/ high capacity storage, external connectivity, web access, mobile devices) versus what they would cost to implement in house.
I suggest finding consultants that have referrals with customers of similar size to you. Its easy to over or under provision your infrastructure through someone with out the correct knowledge (or spend way too much on consulting). Microsoft has consulting services but bill quite heavily and I would only recommend them for larger 20,000 + user solutions with complicated migration strategies. Compugen and Myra can fill in the gap from small to enterprise. I can only recommend solution providers on the island for small deployments unfortunately as I have limited experience with contractors in this space and would probably just host anything needed online.
If its just some very basic questions post them here and I can answer them to get you started in the right direction.
My experience with messaging spans about 8 years of various size deployments and migrations - currently managing a team of analysts and am the architect for messaging services in a large enterprise (25k+), and can likely set you in the right direction (and no I don't consult :P )
Id say the following is a general rule of thumb.
<100 : Host online
101-1000 : Consult for design and deploying, have in house staff with general knowledge. Analyze cost of hosting - there is a break even point somewhere in this range.
1001-10000 : Have specialized staff for operational admin, consult planning, strategy and design.
10,001+ : Dedicated staff and solution designers. Consult around large scale planning.
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