Combining Gmail and Exchange 2010

By Gmail, I'm assuming you mean they are using a paid edition of Google Apps for Business.

The mail for each user's mailbox must be stored somewhere. Either it is stored in on Google's servers (Mailbox is in Google Apps), or it is stored on the SBS 2011 server (Mailbox is in Exchange). It can't exist in both places at the same time, synchronization is not really feasible.

You CAN have a hybrid environment where some users are on one system and some users are on the other. This is useful when you are in mid-migration.

You can configure mail routing on either server. Email arrives on the first server (e.g. Google Apps), and messages destined for a mailbox that doesn't exist gets passed along to to the secondary server (e.g. Exchange Server). Or vice versa.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/96855?hl=en

This is different from having the mail exist in BOTH locations, which is nearly impossible.

Really it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Which mail system do you intend to use going forward?

Hi Frosty,

I'd like to use both systems in Sync. Don't really mind which is the primary.
Possible?
Thanks for your input so far.
Olaf

Sync? No. Nothing that I would  be comfortable recommending.

You can check out imapsync, which you can run on a server and will sync two IMAP mailboxes. Since Google Apps and Exchange Server both support IMAP, you could potentially use this tool.

http://imapsync.lamiral.info/

But you'd need to manually configure every account, you'd need to possess and store the password for every account, and you'd have to constantly keep the imapsync service up to date with changing passwords. It would be a messy and difficult and a major security hole. But possible? I suppose so.

What are you trying to accomplish? The core problem here isn't so much that you can't sync content between the two services, but WHY you want to do that in the first place?

Because they used to have their mail with Google apps but now have their own emails server. Some users however like gmail.  So I was hoping to offer both if possible.
I guess I could setup Imap on outlook clients also?
Olaf

Agree with Frosty.

One thing I am curious about. Why are you going with SBS 2011? Microsoft has retired this product and will no longer be actively developing it.

Hi Frosty,

Thanks for the info. I convinced the client to run in house exchange. Rolling out now.
Great advise.

Gareth,

Because its the perfect fit  money wise in countries with bad internet (I am rolling this out in Vanuatu) and I know the product really well.
Cloud here is not an option yet.
If there was a replacement for SBS out there I would happily sell it to my clients. Needs to be an all in house option or a complete hybrid solution for similar money. Do you know of any?
Always very open to opinions/ ideas.

I will leave question open to see if I get anymore comments.

Olaf

We are using a hybrid solution. The Imap solutions were not working well because when internet drops the sync starts all over again and makes things worse by clogging up the internet connections.
Am using POP (not the SBS pop connector because that does not allow me to keep a copy on the Gmail server) in outlook to download messages into the  users OST file. Primary MX record is pointing at the SBS server, secondary at Gmail. Note that the aim is to get rid of Gmail soon . Otherwise I would have kept the primary MX pointing at Gmail.
Considering  the clients limited bandwidth this works OK.
Please note also that the reason I ran their own email server was that 50-70% of email send is destined for colleagues in same office. By eliminating this internet usage (emails are locally send) I have improved their general browsing experiences.
Thanks all for your input.