Going Outside the Box -- How E-mail Outsourcing Can Free Up Your Company's Resources

You know how important e-mail is to your enterprise. What you may not realize is that maintaining your own e-mail server might not be the best way to do your business.

 

The last year has brought a lot of hype about "application service providers" -- companies which handle the software administration of customers so they don't have to. But outsourced e-mail is turning into the biggest success story of all, because, says George Peabody, vice president of the Aberdeen Group, "the technology for the care and feeding of a mail system is well understood. And, outsourcing it leaves you with the ability to spend your company's money elsewhere." Moving out the responsibility and server racks isn't just cost-effective, either: doing so yields an added level of security and reliability, from a specialized provider with resources dedicated to staying ahead of the curve.

 

Small-, medium-, and even large-scale enterprises are saying goodbye to the software and hardware concerns, and staffing headaches, of maintaining their own e-mail capability. According to many analysts, before long, most companies will be contracting out their e-mail: a Gartner Group study estimates that "by 2001, 50% of enterprises currently uninterested in outsourcing will outsource at least 5% of their messaging budget."

 

If you contract with an e-mail service provider, all you'll need is a connection to the internet, and a staff member with the responsibility of creating the users on a secure webpage. From then on, your users will be able to access their e-mail using the same applications they've grown accustomed to.

 

One company that's switched is SilverBack Technologies, a Billerica, MA management service provider with 65 employees. To SilverBack IT manager Larry Bolick, outsourcing e-mail is like using a third-party telephony system: "The real advantage of Centrex is you can get good, very reliable, basic telephone functionality without having to worry about managing the box or the services that the box requires. And e-mail is a lot like that -- especially at our end of the market."

 

"Outsourcing... frees up some manpower, because we don't have to manage mailboxes. Reliability is another piece of it -- because you have people 24/7 actually watching the application."

 

Putting everything on the "outside" may require a change in mindset. Says Peabody, "One of the reasons that some enterprises look at ASPs with some skepticism is that you could be putting the 'crown jewels' of the company into the hands of a third party."

 

SilverBack took careful stock of its needs before tailoring its service agreement. For the sake of confidentiality, for example, the company has arranged for PSINet to certifiably wipe its host servers of any trace of e-mails. "We're not that concerned with our history -- there's really not that much to hide -- what we are concerned about is the security of our proprietary information," says Bolick. On the other hand, he suggests, a company which requires an extra level of system diligence -- a law firm, for example -- will need to decide whether to operate a backup system locally, or contract with the provider for the service.

 

If you're a candidate for e-mail outsourcing, the best thing you can do is assess your needs with an eye to the future.

 

1) Some companies will fit in naturally -- for example, those new to e-mail, or who are breaking out of legacy systems which would require major capital expenditure to upgrade. Likewise, companies anticipating the sort of intensive growth, locally or decentralized, which can challenge many typical e-mail server configurations, are good candidates.

 

2) There are a variety of plans with options such as user aliases, groupware functionality, and end-user storage space to choose from. Nor is it an all-or-nothing-at-all proposition -- so for example, SilverBack will very likely soon set up an Exchange server to handle the front-office needs of sales and marketing staff, while its engineers will continue to use the PSINet gateway.

 

Of course, you're probably not worried whether it's within the capability of your IT staff to handle all your e-mail traffic (that is, unless you are). But unless they've got something to prove, going outside for e-mail is likely the most viable path. As IDC's Amy Mizouras puts it, "If your core competency is not to manage your e-mail system, and you don't want to spend your time and resources managing an e-mail system, then it would probably make a lot of sense to go outside. It's the same reason I might pay someone to clean my house when I'm perfectly capable of doing it -- it might cost me $60 a month... but I don't have time to clean my house, and I have a lot more important things to do than scrub floors."