UKFast

Hosted Microsoft Exchange - business email

Hosted Microsoft Exchange from UKFast takes the hassle of running your own email platform out of your hands. Powerful mailbox features for business class email lets you focus on your organisation and services, providing real cost efficiencies. The solution provides flexibility, scalability, and can be tailored to your specific needs.

Features

  • Highly available, redundant Microsoft Exchange platform
  • Emails stored across two load-balancedstorage platforms
  • All client-server communication is SSL encrypted
  • Anti spam and anti virus included as standard
  • Simple pricing model - pay per mailbox per month
  • Expert Microsoft Exchange support team available
  • Self service user and mailbox management via MyUKFast
  • 50GB mailbox capacity as standard
  • 75MB message size as standard to cope with large attachments
  • UKFast owned and operated UK data centres

Benefits

  • Avoid the complexity of running your own Exchange platform
  • Shared calendars, tasks, address lists, folders and contacts
  • Support available for configuration and ongoing management
  • All data stored in UKFast owned and operated data centres
  • UK data sovereignty guaranteed

Pricing

£4.50 a user a month

  • Education pricing available
  • Free trial available

Service documents

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

8 6 1 5 0 0 3 3 6 5 1 5 0 6 9

Contact

UKFast Laurel Mills
Telephone: 0800 923 0601
Email: gcloud@ukfast.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
  • Private cloud
  • Community cloud
  • Hybrid cloud
Service constraints
None
System requirements
Fair usage and Terms of Service apply

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Calls are responded to within 3 rings. Service Ticket response time is dependent on the criticality: 1. Critical - Immediate Response 2. High - Response within 10 minutes 3. Medium - Response within 1 hour 4. Low - Response within 4 hours 5. Very Low - Response within 24 hours. The standard SLA response times are applicable from 09:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday (excluding UK Bank Holidays). 365/24/7 Support is also available as a service at an additional cost.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
None or don’t know
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
No
Support levels
All UKFast customers have access to ticket and telephone-based support, unless they choose to take an unmanaged service. Customers have access to a named Account Manager who takes overall responsibility for the customer's commercial, technical and support relationship with UKFast. Customers are assigned a support "pod" based on the type of solution they have with UKFast. This ensures customers will always be supported by the same core team of support engineers who are technical experts in their particular solution. Enterprise and public sector customers also have access to a named Service Manager in addition to their Account Manager.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Full help documentation available at docs.ukfast.co.uk. Onboarding support is provided by our Microsoft Exchange support engineer team along with solutions architects. We offer services to enable seamless on-boarding and collaborate to design a bespoke solution to meet your requirements. An onboarding process would typically include - Discovery process / Timeline setting / Risk assessment / Implementation process / Quality Assurance
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
At the end of the contract any customer data stored will only be extracted by UKFast with the prior consent of the customer. UKFast shall purge and destroy (as defined in security accreditation for different ILs) customer data from any of its own equipment after the contract ends.
End-of-contract process
A similar process to on-boarding is provided for customers wishing to leave UKFast. We provide full transitional services at an additional charge (please refer to the pricing document for more details). An example phased off-boarding process is as follows: 1. Discovery: UKFast meets the customer’s new provider who will lead the project 2. Timelines: Timelines are agreed where possible and alternatives offered when needed 3. Risk: UKFast identifies any risks that may not be apparent to the new provider or that are inherent to the UKFast solution 4. Implementation: UKFast assists the new provider if needed 5. Quality Assurance: UKFast offers a debrief and review meeting if the new provider requires.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari 9+
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
POP and IMAP access available for integration with mobile-based email applications.

Touch screen optimisation and redesigned Outlook Web Access interface for mobile and web users, as well as offline content and ActiveSync across devices.
Service interface
No
API
No
Customisation available
No

Scaling

Independence of resources
UKFast's Hosted Microsoft Exchange platform is actively managed by our Exchange infrastructure and engineering team, to ensure all users receive the level of service expected. Advanced Zabbix monitoring is deployed on all aspects of the platform to detect and alert any issues so that we can mitigate before they become service impacting.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
No

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Conforms to BS7858:2012
Government security clearance
Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Encryption of all physical media
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
Equipment disposal approach
Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
UKFast will support customers to export data as required.
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • ODF
  • Other
Other data export formats
Pst
Data import formats
  • CSV
  • ODF
  • Other
Other data import formats
Pst

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
Data protection within supplier network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Network availability - 100% Infrastructure availability - 99.99% Availability is based on the total number of operating hours of a given calendar month and excludes planned and emergency maintenance. Service credits of up to 10% of the standard monthly support fee are payable for any month where the availability SLA is not met.
Approach to resilience
UKFast owns and operates a 5.52MW tier 3 1,000 rack data centre estate. This contains multiple physically separate buildings, connected by dedicated fibre. High voltage power connections are provided from separate primary sub-stations. All mission-critical services including Standby Generation, Cooling systems and UPS (uninterruptible power system) are provided at N+1 or greater across the whole facility. The complex has a power density of over 6KW per square foot, providing diverse A & B power to each data rack, and all eCloud service platforms are supported from quadruple power feeds. The data centre complex is supported by 9MW of standby generation with over 100,000 litres of fuel storage and eight hour fuel supply SLA. All critical services are supported by 4.6MW of UPS power and 4.9MW of data centre cooling. The public sector hosting suite has fully resilient networking, switches, carrier-redundant leased lines, power and backup generators, all separated from the rest of the UKFast network and data centre complex.
Outage reporting
A public status page is available on the UKFast website, which shows live status of our core network and infrastructure along with details of any incidents. Customer notifications are managed via our ticketing system accessible via MyUKFast.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Management access to environments is strictly restricted to authorised and vetted personnel only. Granular access rights ensure individual personnel have access to only the resources they need in order to carry out their specific tasks and responsibilities. Logical and physical separation of access rights is provided, and all management interfaces are restricted to internal privileged networks and are not accessible to the internet or external networks.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
LRQA
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
24/06/2019
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
All processes are covered
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
Yes
Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
Ultima Risk Management
PCI DSS accreditation date
29/07/2019
What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
Office network not covered as this has no access to client infrastructure.
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
  • Cyber essentials / cyber essentials+
  • SOC 2 - System and Organisation Controls
  • ISO 27017:2015 - Information security controls for cloud services
  • ISO 27018:2019 - Protection of PII in public clouds
  • ISO 22301:2020 - Business continuity management systems

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes
An ISO27001-compliant information security management system is operational

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
Change management system operational which documents all changes, responsible parties, time of change and senior-level sign off. All changes pass through a Change Advisory Board (CAB).
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
Vulnerability scan run once per month and critical vulnerabilities patched within 30 days. Additional vulnerability scan run after any significant change implementation.
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Internally designed and developed threat monitoring system is run on all infrastructure.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
ISO27001-complaint processes and systems for incident response are operational.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
Yes
Connected networks
  • Public Services Network (PSN)
  • Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)
  • Other
Other public sector networks
MoD RLI

Pricing

Price
£4.50 a user a month
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
A 30 day trial of up to 5 mailboxes is available by agreement

Service documents