I'm looking at doing some work in an area that has been slow to wake up to the full implications of cloud computing. Words like data sovereignty, shared hosting, offshore transfer of personal information, and layers of IaaS/PaaS/SaaS providers are just starting to come into vogue and potential clients are asking questions of their service providers (I don't want to be providing advice on these things directly, just satisfy potential clients that I satisfy their requirements for these things).One option could be "secure" or "encrypted" cloud providers like ProtonMail or KolabNow, while another option would be a "trusted" cloud provider like Microsoft and Office 365.However, I'm just exploring all the options at this stage, and wondered if there is any kind of plug-and-play appliance to provide self-hosted email and file hosting/dropbox/owncloud functionality? I've seen the Spreedbox (which looks pretty cool, if over-engineered), but this doesn't currently provide email services. I know that I could probably set this all up myself using any number of proprietary or open source solutions on generic hardware, but I also know that running an email server without really knowing what you're doing is about the least responsible Netizenery imaginable. So really looking for something plug and play/minimal configuration, and with Windows-style updates/patches to deal with any security issues automatically.Or am I dreaming and the only way to get this style of service/appliance is to pay someone that knows what they're doing to maintain it for me? Does a service exist where I can get them to do this on dedicated hardware, or only virtual machines? I know dedicated hardware is going to be more expensive.If it matters, size will be very small, max 3-4 users (and probably just 2 to start with).And yes, I know that email is about the least secure form of communications currently available, but demonstrating better-than-market awareness of these issues and solutions will only help if I decide to go down this potential route.PS. Not really sure if this is the right forum. Query is kind of an anti-cloud one.
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