The term hosted exchange refers to a service in the telecommunications industry whereby a provider makes an e-mail box and space available on a server so its clients can host their data on the server. The provider manages the hosted data of its clients on the server. Clients can access their emails, address book, task management and documents from different places and through various media. The e-mails are routed to a laptop or mobile phone through push technology.
The prerequisite for the use of this function is an exchange server. The market leader is the Microsoft Exchange Server, but there are also other providers. The messaging system works regardless of network size, both in the intranet and the internet and uses MAPI (an RPC protocol) to enable the collaboration between groups. It can be connected both to PCs and Macintosh computers.
Companies that have their own IT department can also manage their own exchange servers.