I have read that there is an option of using Gmail as your primary mail server. In the sense that you can add mx records etc and you do not have to do it on your own server.
Do you think this is a recommended setup in terms of security. Will Gmail do the fight against virusses, spam, and brute force attacks for you?
[UPDATE]
I have seen that this post has some attention by a couple of people. I must say that right after this post I switched my whole communication system to Google. With communication being email, calendar, documents, etc. I must say that this is in my opinion the best step we made.
[switching webhosts]
We were a starting company, and I had to switch webhosts and servers a lot due to configuration/price/etc. with every switch I had to set over all the websites, and also every time the email adresses, and always losing the emails that were on the other server. With having your email 'in the cloud'. Your emails are always at one place, and you just have to set over the websites when switching hosting providers.
[server security]
Another big issue was the security. We had to move over to a dedicated, with more power. With the greater power came greater complexity. I had to work with linux now, and build my own solid server, with great protection to the outside world. I had to say I was amazed by the numbers of attacks we got each day. Being brute force hacks, sniffing etc. After months of work I had finally build a somewhat 'safe' system. The only weak point in my opinion was the email system. Getting a good spam protection, and I had no idea what kind of risks there are more. This is a thing of the past now, as all the email of the company is safely delivered and protected against spam.
[server performance]
Another small benefit is the resources used by the email programs. I don't have any spam protection or antivirus running on the machines now, this has to be a small benefit.
[conclussion]
Finally the service is great. There are a lot of synchronisation options, also for mobile devices. Being a small company this would be hard for us to set up on our primary server, so having this all work from the cloud is a great thing.