Looking at some of the top stories in the hosted exchange space this past week, we see that according to TMC’s Erin Harrison, in an effort to allow organizations to self-manage their BlackBerry (News - Alert) deployments in the cloud, smartphone maker Research In Motion rolled out an open beta for its BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 – a new RIM-hostedE service for mid-sized businesses and enterprises.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company introduced its free cloud-based service for Office 365 users in more than 30 countries.

Alan Panezic (News - Alert), vice president at Research In Motion, said BlackBerry Business Cloud is a cost-effective way for organizations to access Microsoft Corp.’s Office 365 software.

“BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is an easy and cost-effective way for businesses and government agencies to extend Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365 to BlackBerry smartphones and manage the deployment in the cloud,” Panezic said. “We have been working together with Microsoft and select customers through an early access program and we are pleased to now launch an open beta for the service.”

Company officials said key features of the hosted Exchange product include access to Microsoft Exchange Online e-mail, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone.

Also, this past week TMC’s (News - Alert) Mini Swamy wrote that a new mandate by the Financial Services Authority issued in November 2010 made it compulsory for companies in certain sectors to record all business communications made via mobile devices and from fixed lines and store them for a period of six months.

Although the FSA announced that the legislation would come into force within one year and indicated an inception date of Nov. 14, 2011, many companies were yet to ensure such compliance. In addition to calls, companies were also required to record business related e-mails, texts and instant messages and to retain this information for a similar period.

Robin Bingeman, hosted Exchange e-mail archiving expert of Cryoserver, said that in spite of having been given adequate time to implement a solution, most companies were racing to find a last-minute compliant solution before the Nov. 14 deadline.

“Companies that are not yet in compliance are doing a disservice to themselves,” said Bingeman, adding that as non compliance attracted a hefty fine, the longer companies postponed implementing a compliant solution, the greater the risk of settling for an inadequate one.

And TMC’s Rajani Baburajan noted that ToutApp, which offers products to improve e-mail productivity, has launched ToutApp 4.0 with new features such as integration with Gmail, an iOS app and Dynamic Templates.

Tout allows e-mail users to turn repetitive, commonly copy-pasted e-mails into templates that can be personalized with a few clicks – even from your phone. Hosted Exchange e-mails sent using ToutApp can be tracked both for views and clickthroughs.

By using these dynamic templates, users can send a personalized e-mail from anywhere. Multiple dynamic fields such as name, company or location can be auto-filled as you write your e-mails, saving you even more time, company officials said.

Additionally users can auto-CC or auto-BCC (News - Alert), and even auto-attach a file permanently to a template.

Tout iOS lets mobile users send out content-rich e-mails using customizable Tout Templates from their phones. This will help users avoid embarrassing typos or stilted responses. E-mails can even be scheduled for delivery at a later time.

Offered as part of the Tout app is Tout University, which teaches you how to be more productive and communicate better over e-mail, through guides, tutorials and example e-mail templates.