Email Contacts Calendar Business - home office synchronization

What is used in professional business's to sync all their contacts, emails, calendar etc between devices.

I use apple products mainly when out (my new iPhone 6 ), I just want all contacts that I have on my phone and also on my computer and laptop to be synced.

But at home / Office I use a PC (i7), and I also have a work laptop that gets used when programming.

I sync all files using dropbox, When I save programming software etc I make sure that both my PC and my Laptop save locations are in the dropbox folder and this really works well.

However my email and contacts are all over the place, my phone has some of the same contacts as I use them regularly but I am fed up of not having a number as its on the PC, then I have to go through emails to find a contact detail or WORSE lol phone the wife to find it for me lol....

Also if I create a calendar event like a meeting how does it all get stored on all devices.

What do small business use to do this sort of synchronization between office machines and also mobile devices etc.

Just trying to make the way I work more professional!

Cheers
Mick

We use Office at work, I have a BB so it uses the enterprise server too. But I so do a belt a braces sync with a cable as I use the PC to charge the phone too.

All my emails a duplicated on my BB and any emails I send from the device are saved server side.
Laptop email is the master BB is effectively a slave.

MH said:

We use Office at work, I have a BB so it uses the enterprise server too. But I so do a belt a braces sync with a cable as I use the PC to charge the phone too.

All my emails a duplicated on my BB and any emails I send from the device are saved server side.
Laptop email is the master BB is effectively a slave.

Click to expand...

How does it function @MH, I have office on both my PC and my Laptop.

What is the server? how does that work

Thanks mate.

Mick

They use Exchange Server 2010 and probably a relay to and from the BES at Blackberry.
Others have iPhones, and Windows phones. However I believe the BB has the most complete service.

How it works in the back end who knows, but it works. It is an enterprise solution as we have 140000 employees.

Email is easy, use IMAP on all systems and synchronisation just happens, most email providers deliver both POP and IMAP so you won't need to change provider or email address.

Contacts and calendar might be better served by creating a Google or Yahoo mail account, not use the mail and just sync the contacts and calendar.

It's what I do since ditching the server. That's not to say the Outlook/Exchange system should be ignored more that since a lot of the functionality is delivered by the Exchange server it can be expensive for smaller business.

So I guess for a Serious office environment you would need a windows server running exchange?

I am trying to get my head around all that is needed, and then the configuration lol

Thank you all.

Mick

Mick said:

So I guess for a Serious office environment you would need a windows server running exchange?

I am trying to get my head around all that is needed, and then the configuration lol

Thank you all.

Mick

Click to expand...

MS Small Business Server is the way to go for smaller business if you want Exchange.

I am pretty good with Linux variants lol, but have not used any kind of windows server for a very long time.

Possibly I might setup a test server here at home, what are the requirements, recommendations, and also the costs involved.

Any suggestions is welcome, I am not sure what I need.

Regards
Mick