Final Words

Hopefully, this ebook has helped you learn about the benefits and inner workings of outsourcing your company's email. Even if you ultimately decide this is not the right course for your business, or that it isn't the right way to cut costs at this juncture, you know have a much better understanding of one of the main methods of technological outsourcing and cost reduction available to businesses today.

If someday you do opt to incorporate outsourcing, let this ebook be your guide through the process. While the email service provider you choose should ultimately help you with the transition, you are at a much greater advantage if you go into the process with knowledge of your own. Knowing what specific services and functions you need ahead of time can save you a lot of grief later in the process. Knowledge isn't just power—it's also the ability to increase efficiency and effectiveness in your business environment.

When dealing with outsourcing companies and the changes that are coming for your organization, always remember first and foremost that the goal of this endeavor is to improve your company and make things easier in the long run. If anything seems to be working against you rather than for you, remember that you are free to change course. Don't let the momentum of a situation keep you on a path that is anything less than the best path for your company.

In the world of 21^st-century business, the specialization and division of business processes has the potential to streamline even the most difficult and stubborn element of technology. Be informed, be wise, and proceed down this new course, into this new paradigm with knowledge and forethought. If you do, the rewards are great, and the potential is unlimited.

Finding the Right Help for Email Processing

It goes without saying that you don’t want an unqualified stranger processing your email. When it comes down to handing over your email to a third party, you want to be sure that the individual (or organization) is the right one for the job. While your goal is the hand-off relatively simple tasks, this still means that you’re going to have another set of eyes looking at your documents and making decisions about what stays and what goes—or, at the very least, what gets immediately deleted and what gets passed on to you.

It makes sense, then, to take the necessary time to find the right individual or organization to help you with email processing. There are a number of ways to approach the problem—and the right solution is going to be different for every company or organization. The most important thing is that you choose something that makes you and your employees feel comfortable and that the solution matches your needs in terms of size and scope. For personal email pre-filtering, for example, you might find it easy (and economical) to hire a single freelancer who can work specifically with you to set up ground rules and criteria for the perusal of email. For a larger operation, you might want to choose a company or organization that has the manpower and resources necessary to screen emails on a larger scale.

Whatever solution you choose, be sure that you are clear about your expectations and needs right from the start. Remember that you’re handing over a vital part of your business’ line of communication, so it’s important that your method for screening out unnecessary emails has to match your company’s level of maturity and professionalism. Additionally, it can be important to consider to what extent an outside email processor should be allowed to participate in operations. It might be possible for this person to actually answer some of your emails (especially if they are repetitive or form-oriented) or take it upon him or herself to forward messages to more appropriate recipients. The way you use additional email screening is up to you.

How Will Pre-Screened Email Increase Productivity

When your email is pre-screened, you can choose to have only the most important messages get to you. Think of the kinds of messages that populate your inbox. Notifications of meetings, repeats of information you already have, minutes of last week’s meetings... the list goes on and on. By having a third party filter your email, you can assign the tasks of noting schedule changes, tossing out repeated information, or doing away with non-essentials to someone else—and reserve your valuable time for essential tasks only.

If you’re unsure about how this choice might affect your work life, take a few days to chart the purpose and utility of each email you receive. How many are unnecessary (meaning you wasted time simply in reading them)? How many contain basic information that could be compiled into a more-easily-read digest format? How many are restatements of information you already have? Chances are pretty good that no more than five or ten percent of the email you receive needs to be immediately read and taken action upon by you personally. The right email service could group these essential emails together for your immediate perusal.

Why Outsource the Handling of Email

In business, time, as the saying goes, is money. Today’s businesspeople are spending increasing amounts of time simply keeping up with the huge bulk of email that descends into their mailboxes each and every day. While modern spam-screening features and junkmail-jamming tools have made a big difference in the quality of material that gets to your mailbox, it’s not uncommon for an entire morning to pass in which you feel like you completed no work: you simply spent all of your time answering email.

No matter how important some of the messages are, answering email can be a major drain on your time and can effectively take you way from other office activities and functions. Sifting through the long list of emails in your inbox can eat up hours—and attempting to stem the onrushing tide by handling emails the moment they “ding” into your mailbox can mean that you never have more than two or three minutes of uninterrupted time to devote to “real” work projects and problems.

Outsourcing Emails and Handling Responses

If you’ve gotten this far through the text, you’ve read a plethora of information about effectively outsourcing your company’s email services through companies that will help you with servers, virus protection, and overall technical know-how. At the end of the day, however, this approach does not affect the amount of email you and your company will receive.

In businesses where email is a main source of communication, the pile of untouched and unread messages can grow sky-high (meaning it’s a good thing we’re keeping such missals in electronic form if only to cut down on actual, physical stacks of correspondence). Outsourcing the technical handling of your email processes is a great way to make it easier to handle the overall function of your email—but the next step can be to actually outsource the handling of your email.

Managing Staffing Issues

If your organization is anything less than gargantuan, having an in-house email connectivity department can be impossible. You might not have enough volume to warrant a full department of specialists to keep at your beck and call. What often happens, then, is that organizations rely on a single individual to keep systems up and running. Consider, for example, how often you depend upon the storied “IT Guy.” While it’s definitely smart to have someone on your staff who is well versed in computers and networks, you might not want to have your entire email operation ensconced in the knowledge of just one individual. If you were for some reason to lose that individual suddenly, would someone else be able to step right in? Probably not. Most systems rely as much on anecdotal on-the-job knowledge as book-learning—meaning that single individual is incredibly important to keeping things up and running. In the case of a sophisticated email system, it might be wise to keep functions outsourced to an external organization where there are many specialists ready to step in and take over should the need arise.

Lists and Backups

Build Better Black/White Lists

If, like many companies, you struggle with an onslaught of unwelcome email on a day-to-day basis, you know that it is important to filter out unwanted messages before they even make it to your inbox. For many companies, this can go above and beyond the filtering of spam (a services also offered by most email outsourcing companies). Instead (or additionally), you can build a complete list of accepted and unaccepted addresses to keep unwanted messages from attacking your inbox. Again, the right company will work with you to determine your needs and set you up with the right service for your organization.

Backup Systems and Outage Protection

If your company relies heavily on email for communications both inside and outside your organization (as many currently do), even a short temporary outage or disruption in service can be devastating, resulting in lost business and productivity. When you have your email operations in-house, outages are your problem: if something goes out, it is your responsibility to find a way to deal with it. When your email is outsourced, however, you don’t have to worry about outages negatively affecting your business. An email outsourcing company will have access to its own backup servers—meaning that disruptions in service will be fewer and more far between. Consider this: if your in-house server goes down in flames, you might wait 24 hours or more to get a technician to your location and find the root of the problem. In the meantime, you’ll be effectively crippled, with employees unable to send or receive email messages (an important daily activity in many offices). With an outsourced email system, however, you should get full service backup. If a server goes down, a reputable email company will have a backup server ready to take its place. Disruptions in service are simply much less of an issue when you use an outsourced email company.

Why Stop Now? Going One Step Beyond

Additional Services and Considerations

Outsourcing your company’s email represents a fairly major change in the way of managing day-to-day business. In addition to the upsides to outsourced email listed above, you’ll also want to consider how the following possibilities might add to or enhance your business.

Newsletters and Updates

If your company regularly provides customers or associates with newsletters or updates about things that are happening within your organization or news that is related to your company, it is possible for an email outsourcing company to take care of this for you. With a given format and standardized content, you can pass off the task of major communications to your email outsourcer. You’ll serve your company by getting a project off someone else’s plate—and likely increase service to customers and associates by sending out newsletters that are timely and well designed. The right email company should be able to discuss the needs of your organization with you—then offer a package of services that suits your needs.

Its All About Support

In the end, what differentiates a good company from a bad company is the customer service and the level of customer support you receive. A great outsourced email system isn’t worth a dime if you receive no support and have to navigate through errors and problems on your own. You might as well have kept the email server in-house if that’s the case.

However, a good outsourced email company will consider your needs and do whatever they can to correct problems or even just explain the instructions they’ve given you in greater detail.

One major way most outsource companies can help you is by the use of support tickets. Let’s say you come across an issue while using administrator functions of the email system. If you cannot correct the issue, you would open a support ticket and explain your problem, and a representative from the company would get back to you in a reasonable amount of time. If they are a company that’s worth their price, they’ll get back to you within a few hours at the very latest.

If the problem occurs down at the user level, they too are encouraged to open a support ticket. However, they will more than likely be notified by email once the problem has been solved. If the company finds that the issue reaches deeper than the user level, the system administrator, which may very well be you, will be notified.

Regardless of the difficulty of the problem you may encounter, take solace in the fact that your outsourcing company is there to help you through it. And if they don’t help you, then it’s time to find a new company. After all, you are paying money for their services. It is only right that the level of service you receive is above what you experienced with an in-house email system.

Your Step-By-Step Transfer Guy

With everything situated and prepared for the big move, it is only natural to want to know or have some sort of game plan to get through the transfer. Every company has their own unique methods of transferring data and keeping things organized, but the following should suffice as a general outline of what to expect:

1. All data is transferred from the current server to the new server, if needed.

2. Mailboxes, usernames and passwords are created for all those wishing to have a unique user account. The number of mailboxes should match your subscription level with the outsource company.

3. Functionality of these mailboxes is tested via IP access.

4. Security is implemented to your specification.

5. Spam and content filters are placed and tested.

6. Specialized functions as well as routine procedures are implemented, such as a block list, a file-size limitation, back-up procedures and other functions.

7. Diagnostic tests are run to ensure the functions you’ve specified are in working order.

8. Once initiated, all current emails are redirected from your current server to the new server.

9. After a period of transfer time, all emails will go directly to the new server as the old server is taken down. This process can take up to two days to complete.

10. In ideal situations, all employees will be completely unaffected by the process taking place and functionality should not be compromised during the move.

11. You will be provided with administrator and user manuals to help you take control of the mail system. These manuals will help you change settings and such if and when you need to.

12. The company will help you sort through ways to contact them and how to best reach them for assistance.

13. Employees will be given detailed instructions on how to access their new mail accounts, though user actions usually do not require any change at all.

It sounds like a lot to digest, and it can be for those who are not acquainted with the more intricate workings of email. However, an outsource company takes care of practically everything for you. So as you look at this list of steps to take, don’t worry. All you would likely have to do is set up mailboxes for your employees. You can even let each employee set up his/her own. Not much is laid on your shoulders in this process and that’s the way it should be. After all, you are switching to an outsourced email system to try to increase your efficiency, right?

Moving Old Emails

This process can be either extremely easy or extremely difficult, depending on what your old mail server was like. If it is a fairly standard server, then the outsource company can use automated software to transfer old email messages and configurations to the new server. However, if your old email server was extremely outdated or contained something out of the ordinary, a more manual approach may be necessary. But again, all of this will be taken care of by the outsource company.

Route Filtering

This method of outsourcing is not quite as comprehensive as the previous one. All the external company does in this case is filter your email before routing it to your server. You will still need to have an in-house mail server for this system to work. However, this method eliminates the need to install virus protection, spam filters and content filters. This takes some of the burden off your technicians and servers, but you will still need to have on-site support to handle email network issues and user issues. By keeping a certain amount of expertise in-house and outsourcing just those parts that bring you the most difficulty, you can save time and money and streamline your communications considerably.

Managed Infrastructure

This option basically involves the outsourcing of your email in its entirety. The outsourcing company will manage every aspect of your email services including security, spam protection and backup systems. The company takes care of everything that an in-house administrator would have done.

You should be able to feel at ease knowing that this company is taking care of all of your email infrastructure needs. They’ll store all of your email as it is received; it will be removed from the server when it is downloaded by the user. This helps to prevent those pesky “lost” emails and unfiltered spam getting into your office. Plus, it saves you a lot of money as you don’t have to use valuable resources for storing emails and having your own bandwidth. Everything is taken care of at the outsourcing company’s offices. Everything is stored on their servers. Your only encounter with the email functions would be when you add a new user to the network or send and receive email yourself. All security issues are taken care of on the outsourced server as well, so you don’t have to worry about updating individual software on each computer—though you should do that anyway—for email security purposes.

Moving Day

Okay. The time has come to move your current email system over to the outsourced company and you don’t know where to begin. Luckily for you, these companies typically take care of all of the transferring and you won’t have to lift a digital finger.

This doesn’t mean you should be clueless about the process. That’s why this section is devoted to showing you just how the company you’ve chosen will not only transfer your data but will also set up new accounts for all of your employees, install protective software and keep you informed every step of the way.

However, it is important to divide this section into two parts. Below, we will describe the two major types of email outsourcing: managed infrastructure and route filtering. It is important for you to choose the method that best suits your needs and your company’s needs.

Cutting the Necessary Corners

If you’re preparing to make a switch in your email system based on the above information, chances are good that one of your main goals is to cut down on overall operating costs. You’re looking to outsource your email in order to find a more cost-effective way of doing business. What often happens, however, is that businesses enact a cost-cutting measure—and then fail to follow through with the actual cost cuts.

Now, then, is a good time to look at the structure of your organization and take a hard look at what will change once your email is outsourced. Consider, for example, changes you might want to make in human capital. Are any of your employees currently engaged in tasks that will be taken over by the new email company? If so, carrying out the changeover without adjusting your existing status quo is a recipe for failure (and overspending). Consider rewriting job descriptions, combining positions, or moving people to different departments where they can continue to offer great things to the company. Assure your employees that you’re seeking to find the right ways to use their talents—and that you don’t want anyone’s time to be wasted on tasks that no longer need to be done or monitored.

Another sector you will want to check for new overlap is in terms of equipment and hard resources. Do you have excess computer equipment that you will no longer be using? Think about what you might be able to sell—or what space might be cleared out for extra storage or office space.

Properly handled, the switch from in-house email to outsourced email can be a great cost-cutting measure. It is important, however, that you manage things properly to guarantee that you’re getting the most money out of the changes you are making.

Set Up a Temporary Service

Before you venture into transferring all of your email accounts over to an external service, you should set up backup accounts in the meantime. While this is not a necessary step, it can be useful in case there is any sort of delay between setup and full use. For instance, if you find that you’ll be transferring your email networks over the course of a week, you will need a backup account or service. During this time, you may be unable to access the old service hosted on your own networks or use the new one hosted on the external networks.

Again, this is not a required step for the transfer, but it can be beneficial if you do a majority of your communication through email and expect to have a considerable gap between service stop and start times. Just remember to go over all of the particulars with the company with whom you choose to outsource. A good company will want to know your needs and do their best to meet those needs.

Back Up Everything

Whenever you’re using anything involving computers, it is always a good idea to back up important files. Whether you use an external hard drive, Zip disks or any of the other radically changing and expanding backup media available today, it is absolutely vital to make backup copies of all important emails, attachments and even your mailbox. In some cases, you will not be able to transfer your mailbox over to the new server, so you will just need to keep that saved in a separate folder or file.

An accurate record of correspondence is vital to a successful business. It is especially important to have accurate dates on your saved emails. Once you save a backup of everything, do a quick comparison to make sure the dates are the same on both copies. This is very important, especially if important documents are sent via email to external locations. If your company should ever find itself facing litigation of some sort, it will be vital to have accurate timestamps on each and every email for documentation purposes.

Preparing for the Move

Before you even consider moving your email network over to an outside company, be sure that you have everything within your office in order. Here are some tips to make the move smooth and easy and to ensure nothing goes terribly wrong after the fact:

Brief Your Employees

It is never a good idea to surprise your employees with anything. That’s why it is so vital to communicate to your employees exactly what you’re planning to do. Break down why you think it is beneficial to transfer all email functions over to an external server and hosting service. Be sure to include information from any research you may have done. Show your employees how this move will improve the function of your business and save money. While you don’t have to do any of these things and you certainly don’t have to convince your employees of the benefits of the move, it is always a good idea to get full buy-in and support from your company. This will create a sense of community, should there be any difficulty in the transfer or any other bumps in the road.

Once You've Decided to Outsource

It may not seem simple or feel right to outsource right away. That’s okay. It’s normal to feel out of place with something new and different, particularly when it comes to something that can affect the productivity and bottom line of your business. But keep in mind that outsourcing really is the new paradigm in business processes, which is why beginning with email can help so much. The shift of the email functions of an entire company can be quite a huge undertaking, making it necessary to bring in outside help for the journey and to prepare yourself.

The best place to start is the beginning, so let’s get going.

Top Outsourcing Companies

If you’re serious about transferring from an in-house server or email system to an outsourced one, you should definitely check out the following companies. They are a great place to start looking for the right contractor for your business.

Mail2World - mail2world.net

This company serves some very large businesses, including ICQ and iVillage.com. You can view their services as well as detailed case studies on past clients.

LuxSci - luxsci.com

With great customer service and tech support, LuxSci sets itself apart from its competitors. You can purchase email outsourcing services and even Web hosting packages.

The Messaging Engine - messagingengine.com

With comprehensive email services and high levels of functionality, The Messaging Engine is a natural choice for outsourcing business email.

MiraPoint - mirapoint.com

They go beyond your email outsourcing needs and offer web mail and email migration. Regardless of your needs, this company is sure to offer something to meet them.

Connectria - connectria.com

Another natural choice for your business’s outsourcing needs, Connectria offers so many services that their company could be called comprehensive. They also boast the parent company of “American Idol,” FremantleMedia, among their high-caliber clients. The list also includes 3M, A.G. Edwards and The Wharton School.

These are just a few of the many outsourcing companies out there today. By engaging in your own search, you’ll be sure to find more information than you’ll know what to do with. But a large list is beneficial and allows you to be really thorough in screening and selecting the perfect company with the right skill set and level of commitment you deserve.

Just remember to employ the tips provided in this chapter to stay safe and maintain only the highest level of quality in every single aspect of your business.

Look for the Lock

Security

You know that little padlock that appears somewhere on your browser when the website you’re visiting has become encrypted? You should see this symbol whenever you are asked to input personal information. If you do not see this symbol when doing so, do not submit a single thing. Your personal and corporate security are worth much more than taking a risk on a company that failed to encrypt their site. Plus, if they can’t even make their own website safe, what could you possible expect from their email outsourcing services? Unfortunately, probably not very much.

Now with an idea of how to pinpoint a professional website, you can be your own judge when it comes to outsourcing companies. Now you’re ready to get started. Below is a list of some of the biggest and most prominent email outsourcing companies around at the time of this writing. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your own research on companies you find suitable for yourself. But it can give you a head start on getting that email system transfer started today.

More Tips for Spotting a Good Website

Consumer Information.

This can be anything from notes from satisfied customers, to reviews or even a standing with the BBB. Generally, you just need to see some reassurance from others like you that this company is, in fact, authentic. If you can’t find anything like this on their site, feel free to search the Web for any information on the company itself, the owners or even those who have used their services.

Clear Pricing Information

While some companies may have you enter into discussions with them first before stating a price for their services, whether they provide prices on the site is usually a good guideline. They may just be general prices for a certain grouping of services, but there should be some sort of pricing system available, nonetheless. An absence of any prices at all may be a sign of a company that charges way too much or is running a scam.

Defined Services

If you find yourself leaving a company’s website wondering what it is they’re selling, it’s not a good choice. Detailed information on what the company offers is just plain necessary for you to understand and make the right decision. After all, how will you know the business is the right one to outsource your email to?

Tips for Spotting a Good Company Website

The appearance of a company’s website can provide a good idea of whether or not they are worth your time and money. However, don’t get caught up in fancy graphics or elegant designs. While these are signs of professionalism, they are not always the signs of a truly successful company. If you’re looking for a way to spot a decent and up-front company through their website, look for the following:

A Clean, Straightforward Design

Flashing banners and gaudy, dancing animations are a surefire sign that something is awry. You can more readily place your trust in a site that is neat and organized and provides vital information upfront. You shouldn’t have to search very hard for the information you need.

A Logical Interface

Again, you shouldn’t have to spend hours figuring out how the menu works or how to navigate a company’s website. If they don’t know how to organize their site, how do you think they’ll do with system administration and your network?

Clear Contact Information

Contact information should include more than just one email address. You should be privy to who works there, where they are located and how to reach them in several different ways—by phone, fax and email. If content looks to be missing or if the only way to contact the company is through a form or an anonymous-looking email address like “admin@such-and-suchwebsite.com,” you may want to move on to another site. Note: An address that takes this form is not a sign of a poor company in and of itself, but paired with a complete lack of additional information, it may be a red flag. Watch out.

The Latest and Greatest

The Newest Software

Any company you deal with should boast the newest, cutting edge software. Whether it is security, messaging, or other software aspects of email management, do a little research to be sure that the outsourcing company is not cutting corners, particularly in the realm of software that will keep your email data safe. Going one step beyond, is the company flexible when it comes to future acquisitions? Have they budgeted to upgrade or purchase the newest software innovations?

These and other questions will help to form a good image of the ideal email service provider for you. So now that you have an idea of what a great outsourcing company looks like, let’s take a gander at how to find such a company.

Bandwidth and Storage Space

High Bandwidth

As stated before, bandwidth is much like a pipe through which information flows. The smaller the pipe, the less information can flow in a given period of time. Much of the time, in-house servers do not have a wide bandwidth and are forced to dramatically limit the size of files that can be sent or received as attachments. While this may be reasonable for some offices that only deal in small documents, think of those that deal with large graphic design files. Such files are several megabytes in size and may need to be transferred to someone outside of the company and not on the network. When this is the case, email is the most viable transfer option—but not if you don’t have enough bandwidth on your server. That’s why so many people opt to outsource their email systems and servers to a company that has more bandwidth available and the higher-end systems to cope with the load. When you subscribe to their services, the bandwidth costs will be much cheaper for you, as the company has their own server and will have bought bandwidth in bulk.

Maximum Storage Space

It can take up a lot of space on your hard drives to store all of those old emails. That’s why a company with large amounts of storage space is essential to keeping your business streamlined and operating at its highest capacity. With a lot of storage space, you can be sure that no emails will be lost in the mix and that you will never run out of room. You especially want to find a company that allows you to upgrade your account easily. If you suddenly find yourself needing more space or more bandwidth, a quick upgrade should be all it takes to keep up with your needs and make your company the most functional it can be.

Response Time and Constant Support

Fast Response Time

Outsourcing would be worth nothing to you if you have to wait a week to hear back from the company on how to fix a small problem that your old IT department could have fixed in an afternoon. Nor is it acceptable to have to badger your provider until they do something about it. A company that is worth your money is one that will take your problems and questions seriously and get back to you in a reasonable amount of time. Really, it should take no longer than an hour for them to get back to you. Anything longer than that and you’re looking at potential problems down the road. What if you have an emergency situation like a security breach? Fast response on the outsource company’s part can save you a lot of trouble. You don’t want to find out they’re spotty when there’s an urgent need for their assistance.

24-Hour Support

No matter where you are in the world in relation to the outsource company, you should be able to reach them at any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because many outsourcing companies are located overseas, it is especially necessary that they be available at any time. A company that is only open or available for limited business hours will not prove very helpful in a crisis.

The SLA should make specific mention of help desk support hours and availability. You should know that there may be some limitations on the availability of help, such as the number of calls in a month, or the category of technical personnel who can be assisted by the help desk. In some cases, only technical support staff can be assisted, in others—and sometimes for an additional fee—administrative staff, or the entire staff, can be added to the helpdesk component of the SLA.

Support, Access and Features

Comprehensive Support

With any service you buy, you should be able to expect a high level of customer support. The same goes for an outsource email company. You should be able to expect customer support for every facet of your email operations. This should include continuous availability and a willingness to assist with many different situations, even if it’s just explaining how something works. A good company will never make you feel as though you need to hesitate before calling.

Settings Access and Features

Even if you know next to nothing about email, it is still important that you have some access and the ability to change settings. This can range from simply adding a new mailbox or user to adding new content filters. A worthwhile outsourcing company will give you the option to change what you’d like to change or make the changes for you. It’s all determined by what you prefer—your preference should be their top priority.

In addition to this, an email service provider should go to great lengths to preserve the features and functionality of your current email system. Retraining staff is costly, and so the closer the new system can mirror the old, the more efficient and smooth the changeover will be.

Uptime and Access

Consistent Uptime

On the topic of SLAs, uptime is an essential element of a good service provider. Guarantees may seem cheap or unrealistic at times, but they really do matter when it comes to choosing an outsource company. You will need to find a company that has consistent uptime and guarantees that they do. Anything less than that is unacceptable and insufficient for a business such as yours. After all, if you rely heavily on email, every minute of email downtime could mean loss of productivity, business and profits.

Web and Mobile Access

In the current business climate, email should not only be accessible through the desktop client in the office. Email should also be available from home or on the go through web access or specific tools allowing email to be "pushed" to mobile devices. It’s always a good idea to look for a company that offers you the ability to access email through web mail or an online access portal to your mail through a web browser. This way, if you are at home or away from your office computer you can still access your email in a convenient manner.

These features should be explicitly described in the SLA, and while they may cost more (beyond the per-mailbox base price) it is the sign of a good, cutting-edge provider that they have the features available. Some companies have multiple redundancies when it comes to alternative modes of email access, including alternate websites for web mail, VPNs or Virtual Private Networks, and even dial-up modem access.

This is a sign that a company fully appreciates the necessity and importance of email in the modern business environment.

The Biggest and Best Hosting Services

What Defines a Good Outsourcing Company?

In order to take care of a large company’s email needs, the outsourcing company you select needs to be at the top of its game, with large servers and comprehensive customer support in order to really take the lead in this market.

A company you select should have/include:

A General Level of Competence

This may seem obvious, but the fact is, many people will not seek to validate claims of prior competence on the part of an outsourcing company. When such validation is undertaken, you may find that the company is too new to have testimonials, or that those testimonials are from unknown companies in distant parts of the world—not a great start to proving competence.

An email service provider should be able to provide proof of experience, references, and contact numbers so that you can ask any questions of those references. Simple quotes on a testimonials page of a website should not suffice. Additionally, investigate documentation for the provider's procedures and policies in any eventuality. They should have policies in place for crashes, data restoration, backups, and security breaches.

Reasonable Costs

It is reasonable to see an email provider offering their services for a monthly, per-mailbox fee. This is the industry standard and should be expected. What you need to know is how many additional services are included in the base, per-mailbox price. It is also reasonable to see additional fees for additional services. The industry often charges slightly more for features such as additional storage, secure socket layer (a type of encryption) and possibly for virus and spam filters, though increasingly virus and spam protection is falling under basic standard service agreements.

You should also calculate the cost of bandwidth usage before committing to a service provider. This is a cost that will increase the average monthly per-mailbox cost. This is out of the provider's control, but it still needs to be calculated.

You will also need to calculate the cost and effectiveness of the company's SLA or Service Level Agreement. This is an agreement between you and the contractor that will need to cover the availability of system access or "uptime" and general guidelines on availability and performance. This agreement should have reasonable components and be part of the base price, as it should be the most fundamental selling point for the company, so far as customer service is concerned.

Where to Look for a Hosting Service

You can find a hosting and email service provider just about anywhere. However, quite fittingly, the best place to look is online. It all really depends on the level of service your company will need. For instance, you can usually purchase email hosting for a business at a bulk rate with a maximum number of users (your employees). If you run a smaller business, however—those with fewer than 100 employees, for instance—you will need less bandwidth and considerably fewer usernames than a company with over 1,000 employees might require.

One of the easiest ways to locate email providers initially is to search for the phrase “outsource email” in your favorite search engine. Doing so should bring up a substantial list of results. From these, visit a few websites to get a basic idea of each company’s costs, their services offered and how the setup process will commence. Also keep your eyes open for user reviews. You want to outsource with a company that has a lot of positive feedback from satisfied businesses that are comparable to yours.

You will also need to be careful in your selection. For instance, some email host companies merely provide you with the resources to host the email and manage the accounts on your own hard drives and network. This is not what you want at all. Rather, you want an entirely external email hosting system that allows you the freedom to manage it but with the assurance that everything is well-monitored and secured by the outsource company themselves.

Transitioning to Outsourcing

So now that you’re thoroughly convinced you need to outsource your email for the financial benefit and overall security of your company, it’s time to select a business that can handle your specific communications needs without making you spend more resources than you would on an in-house system.

One way that some outsourcing companies keep their costs down is by locating themselves outside of the U.S. and Canada. These companies often operate overseas and can provide you with excellent services at a real bargain rate. If this makes you uncomfortable for any reason, however, it is possible to find U.S.-based companies with fair rates as well.

You need to pay attention to several factors, including location and cost, as you select a good outsourcing company.

Domain Names and Privacy Issues

I Want to Keep My Domain Name

One reason that is often given for avoiding any changes to outsourced email is that companies want to keep email addresses along the lines of firstnamelastname@yourcompany.com. Having email addresses that use your own company name as the domain name is smart. It means that email addresses at your organization will be easily recognizable and memorable. When you outsource your email, however, your domain name does not have to change. A good outsourcing company should be able to help you keep your domain name so that there will be no change for your customers, clients, or employees. No new email addresses—and no new business cards to print.

The Trouble with Privacy Issues

When it comes to email, privacy is often a huge issue. It goes without saying that you want your emails to remain secure and well looked after. The idea of turning over your email to an outside service can seem like a major violation of privacy—something along the lines of asking a 13-year-old girl to let you read her diary. The right outsourcing company, however, should offer you increased security (rather than decreased). Properly handled, a changeover to outsourced email should result in no decrease in company privacy. If a given organization makes you feel in any way nervous about the privacy of your information, walk away and move on to the next. It is your right to choose an organization that makes you feel comfortable. Not only this, but any reputable service provider should have an extensive confidentiality and privacy agreement and mechanisms in place to ensure that the agreement is followed to the letter.

A Loss of Hands-On Control

With the migration of your email systems to an outside provider, the feeling of control you might have had with an in-house system will vanish. While you will still be in control to a certain degree, the processes will be physically moved—in some cases to providers in foreign countries.

To put it another way, no company is an island. There is often a temptation to keep as much work as possible within your own walls—it makes you feel safe and secure, as though your company would be able to survive a major global cataclysm simply because you kept all of your business processes in-house. The truth, however, is that letting the right email service into your organization will help your reliability (and survivability) rather than hurt it. Keeping things in-house is often cost-ineffective and can be a recipe for impending meltdown. Again, the key is in choosing an organization that meets your needs and makes you feel comfortable. You don’t have to work with the first outsourcing company you contact. You should feel free to keep shopping until you find one that feels like a good fit.

You can also alleviate some of the stress associated with this loss of control by ensuring that your needs will not be competing with (and losing out to) the needs and interests of other companies. Make sure that your new provider is flexible and generous in their ability and willingness to respond to any issues that may arise.

Common Fears

No matter how nimble you consider your company to be, chances are quite good that your organization fears massive change as much as the next. It’s always hard to implement a new system or method of organization. In this section, you will find a listing of some of the fear and apprehension-related issues that can keep businesses from making the email change.

The Potential for Unforeseen Costs

There are some costs associated with outsourcing and the "migration" of email from one system to another. When the operation of an essential business process is outsourced, there is always a possibility that the contractor could fold or change their policies in some way that would make it necessary to migrate to a new service provider, incurring more costs. This is an unknown element, but the fear can be mitigated by research and investigation into the reliability and stability of the provider.

Another Look at Analyzing Your Needs

By reading this far in this book, you have certainly learned a great deal of information about the process of outsourcing your company’s email. You’ve learned to consider the specific needs of your company and have probably made note of some important services you’ll want to consider using from a freelancer or outside agency. It is likely that this process has gotten you thinking about your company’s email systems in a more holistic way, meaning that before you move into the process of transitioning to outsourcing, this is a good time to make policy changes or changes in practice.

What’s in Your Inbox?

If you’re going to go through the trouble and expense of having your own email pre-screened and sorted by an outside agency or individual, you’ll want to make sure that your own company isn’t part of the problem. Are forwarded messages and personal emails overwhelming you and your employees? Now might be a good time to overhaul your company email policy to cut down on personal emailing or the spreading of messages that are not necessary to the operation of the company. Make sure each employee is clear on the changes and knows why each was implemented so that they understand it is not punitive, but for the benefit of the company's bottom line.

Professional Expertise, Fixed Costs and Technology

Increased Professional Expertise

Outsourcing will give your company access to a large, dedicated technology staff that has experience in email and messaging management. This kind of access is prohibitively expensive and certainly inefficient in the case of in-house email, but when contracting out to a dedicated service provider, your money will pool with other companies' to allow access to a talented and highly paid technology staff. These people will be specialists, rather than the technology "generalists" available to your business currently.

Fixed Rather Than Fluctuating Costs

The contract you sign with an outsourcing firm should usually not include a fluctuating cost. This fixed cost will be easy to budget for and will give you the peace of mind that in-house management cannot. If a problem arises with a server or software in-house, the costs associated with the repair are completely on you and will become a drain on your budget. With an outsourcer, all unforeseen costs are absorbed by the contractor, leaving you with a steady and predictable cost.

The Newest Technology

Outsourcing your email needs will allow you access to the newest (and often most expensive) technology in the field. The hardware and software available to a dedicated outsourcing company may be financially out of reach for a company whose business does not center around the technology of email. This higher-end technology will allow for better security, reliability, and usability. The benefits of the newest and best technology cannot be understated.

Reliability, Technology and Reduced Management

Reliability Issues

Have you noticed any particular lack of reliability in relation to your email servers? If you haven't, it's probably only because you haven't had the experience of truly reliable email infrastructure. Even if this doesn't apply to you, and you have a remarkably streamlined and effective system, as with all technology, it can fail. And when it does, you will be saddled with the cost of repair and replacement. Email outsourcing places the burden of this repair on the head of a different company—one which is devoted to the task of email management. Additionally, the guarantee of reliability will be delivered along with the new outsourcing contract, removing a worry from the day-to-day operations of your business.

Financial Benefits of Technology

Depending on how much you spend on in-house messaging and email support, outsourcing can dramatically reduce costs. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which outsourcing could possibly cost more than in-house email. Based on the figures and estimates in this book, outsourcing can save your company up to 90% over the in-house alternative.

Financial Benefits of Reduced Management

Rather than burdening your IT staff with the mundane tasks associated with email troubleshooting, a dedicated email service provider will have the best and most efficient and cost-effective tools for supporting your staff. This will reduce the costs associated with the management and administration of help desk service and free up staff to attend to other administrative needs.

Clarifying the Factors you should Consider

Here is a brief discussion of a number of elements of an informed decision on email outsourcing. These are not all of the elements you should consider, but it's an excellent place to start, and will place you in a much better position when it comes time to make the final determination on the necessity or cost effectiveness of outsourcing.

Efficient Human Resource Deployment

How many IT staff do you have? How much of their time is devoted to the mundane problems with email and connectivity trouble? If your business is like most businesses, the answers are "very few" and "too much" —in that order. Most IT departments are overrun with requests for help on email-related issues, and what few resources your IT staff has will be misdirected to issues that could be solved by outsourcing. When outsourcing becomes a reality for your company, that same staff, should you decide to retain them, will be able to focus their efforts on more complex and vexing problems, or develop new approaches to streamline the technology resources the company will choose to keep, rather than outsource.

Expenditure, Advantages and Disadvantages

Despite the prior discussions in this book as to the cost of email handling in-house, many companies are simply not aware of the total expenditures on email and messaging. When determining whether to outsource your email, all advantages and disadvantages of the move should be considered, not only the cost and savings. There are factors involved in email outsourcing that are completely unrelated to monetary savings, and while these qualitative elements may be hard to quantify, their effects should be considered along with all other factors.

In any case, the outsourcing of messaging is something that should be pondered and contemplated. Reading this book is a major step toward an informed and intelligent decision, but your case will have its own complicating factors, and each will need to be handled carefully and in turn.

Essential Elements of Email Outsourcing

In the case of email, however—a service you do need all the time—is it the right choice to outsource? It is such an essential business component that it may seem counterintuitive at first, but in the end, the cost/benefit analysis may very well indicate that it is an expendable in-house process, and that outsourcing will ultimately prove beneficial.

Traditionally, companies have been reluctant to outsource those business functions that are absolutely essential. In-house operation of information technology is just such an essential element. It is a mission-critical, essential element of day-to-day business, but it has one complicating factor. Imagine the telephone service at your business. Your telephone service is essentially an outsourced business function. It is outsourced to the telephone company. When a customer or client calls your business, the call goes through and no thought is given to what telephone company operates your system. The same can be true for email. It does not necessarily differentiate one business from another, and offers no benefit from being somehow faster or clearer—email is essentially the same, no matter who operates the server.

With this understanding of email as a non-differentiating business function, you can see that outsourcing it to save money should not have an adverse effect on your business process.

Cutting Expenses and Downsizing

This is when outsourcing can serve a small- to medium-sized company well. With a simple contract and simple expectations, small and medium-sized companies can reap the same benefits of experience and expertise as the highest-paying multinational corporations.

Companies most often consider outsourcing when they want to cut expenses and perhaps even downsize, though these aren't the only reasons to think about it, and they may not even be the best. The way that the eventual transfer of outsourced business process will work, of course, depends on what sorts of services or functions you decide to outsource. You also need to consider what type of outsourcing you’ll be doing. Will you be hiring employees from another company? Will you be hiring contractors? Will you be hiring an outside business to take care of one of your business’ needs? Knowing why you want to outsource is one major key to success when you actually do outsource.

Another time to consider outsourcing is when you find yourself about to venture into new areas, such as new marketing techniques, or when you need a public relations agent. These industries lend themselves very well to outsourcing or contracting, as they can be hired as needed and can be called upon only when you need a press release, a logo, or something of that nature. Again, if you find yourself needing a certain type of service all the time, it may be more efficient to hire someone to fulfill that need as an employee. But if you only need someone once in a while, outsourcing is the way to go.

When to think about Outsourcing

The pace of modern business is relentlessly fast. Many companies are struggling to keep up, and those that can't are falling into insolvency and ruin. The companies that have managed to keep up with this speed of innovation have done so by constantly adapting to the changing character of 21st century business. It's fast, it's aggressive, and it's often ruthless, but one thing it is over everything else, is creative.

Some of that creative approach can be seen in the various methods and directions of outsourcing and contracting. The reorganization and restructuring of businesses and business models around the outsourcing or specialization of labor can be seen throughout the economy, in many different sectors, though perhaps none so apparently as information technology.

IT is a difficult and demanding field. The knowledge base is enormous and the stakes for failure are extremely high. A large market in IT contracting has developed in the last ten years, and that sector continues to grow with the others that demand it—and that is nearly everyone. In the new economy, the transmission and control of information is essential to growth, and so those able to maintain the IT machine, as it were, are highly desirable.

This also means that some of the largest and most specialized companies take the lion's share of the best IT professionals, while smaller businesses are left with competent, though often not premier, IT staff.

Back-Up

Whether emails are resident on a central server (such as in an IMAP configuration) or resident on individual PCs, a computer crash can mean the destruction of important information and a possible loss of revenue. Backing up email content is a necessary function of managing email, and yet human flaws can still pose a threat to the security of your media. Even if you have a staff that is reliable enough to back up your content, or you have software that can do it automatically, the space required for constant back-ups can be profoundly prohibitive. Outsourcing can solve this problem by placing this responsibility in the hands of professionals who have the time, training, and resources to ensure a safe and timely backup of all data.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be "fit" through the data pipeline that is your network and its connection to the larger Internet. Bandwidth costs money. Most service providers allow a certain amount of bandwidth usage per month, followed by fees for additional usage. Depending on your traffic, a given month could prove particularly expensive just because you were using an essential function of business—the Internet. Email also uses bandwidth, and so outsourcing can reduce the strain on your in-house system, and reduce the costs of overages. Additional benefits include the ability to micromanage email usage, to discover who might be abusing their email privileges and using more bandwidth than what you might think is necessary for their given office function.

Expertise

In-house system administrators are an essential element of Internet technology and email management, but is your system administrator the best at what he or she does? One should ask the question—are you even able to afford the salary for a top-notch technical wizard? The likelihood is that you and your business cannot. Your system administrators may be technically competent. They may even be exceedingly good at what they do, but the fact is, even if they are technological geniuses, someone else can pay them more and you may find yourself one Monday morning with a vacant position and a very essential need that isn't being met. Outsourcing can solve this problem by moving the responsibility to a firm whose full-time job it is to meet the needs of corporate email infrastructure.

Downtime

This is a major issue, particularly in regard to the subtle perceptions of customers. It creates a bad public image when email is bounced back from a down server, or lost all together. Servers that are operated in-house are more than ten times more likely to experience prolonged downtime than those operated by dedicated email outsourcing companies. This mainly has to do with a lack of dedicated IT personnel in a small business who can devote their time to resolving the server problems. Email outsourcing firms often operate with double redundancy, meaning that even if one server crashes, another can step in to take its place without a pause in service.

Security and Protection

Viruses, trojans, and worms are often injected into unsuspecting (and unprepared) systems through spam emails. The cost of licensing and operating effective spam filters and virus protection can be a drain on your company's finances. Even if you do decide to use desktop virus protection, which can be cheaper, current updates and downloads are essential to the effectiveness of the filters. It only takes one missed download to allow a virus into the network, wreaking havoc on an unprepared system and costing thousands of dollars and untold hours to repair.

System Management

In-house email systems require a lot of high-tech staff hours. The investment in system administrators and IT experts required to manage the workings of an email system can be a large financial burden. Outsourcing firms dedicated to email management can manage thousands of users simultaneously. They have dedicated staff to deal with any problems that may arise (and they often will arise at the least opportune time), and all of these services will be provided for a set contracting fee that is determined ahead of time and remains fixed no matter how big the problem turns out to be. This simply isn't the case with in-house technical staff running an in-house system.

Increasing Productivity

Buying and maintaining your own computers and network systems to house an email client and network can still be preferable in some situations, particularly if there is an absolute necessity for hands-on administration, but outsourcing to a firm that specializes in email hosting will very likely increase productivity and reduce the bottom line.

Consider this argument: when the assembly line process first hit the world of automobile manufacturing, it revolutionized everything. No longer did every employee have to be trained in the full process of building a vehicle. Now, each person could learn only one job—and the lower number of discrete responsibilities meant that each employee could learn to do his or her task in the absolute best manner possible and to peak efficiency. When you outsource your email, it’s tantamount to sending the process to the most highly skilled worker on the assembly line—the one who knows the most about email and how it works. You will likely get superior email knowledge and service without having to specialize in email, in-house.

The kinds of problems that can plague email systems of all stripes are of constant concern. User protection is a hot-button issue while unwanted spam and dangerous computer viruses run rampant. Unless you can afford to waste countless hours individually screening every email that comes into your company, an outsourcing company can work wonders for you. They can set up spam and virus filters, monitoring systems and even bandwidth limits to keep your costs down and increase the level of protection your company and your employees enjoy. In addition, all of these features usually cost a lot less when outsourced compared to standard in-house email costs. It’s simply a matter of handing the issue off to the individual (or organization) that is most well-equipped to handle it. Couched in those terms, outsourcing email becomes a very tempting proposition.

Before we move on, let's review some of the most important benefits.

Even More Reasons to Outsource

Outsourcing can be applied to nearly any facet of your business, and while it won’t work with every aspect of your company, it can be an excellent way to save money and simplify your company’s operations.

Outsourcing can also help you save money by avoiding serious expenses such as copiers, fax machines and, through labor contracting, even paying for employee benefits. And with the price of health insurance skyrocketing, there is even more incentive for businesses to outsource.

And that brings us to the subject of this book. Email outsourcing is a practical way to cut costs without cutting functionality. Outsourcing email for all of your employees and for your corporate communications instead of hiring contractors for in-house operations, will usually result in an overall cost savings and increase in productivity. With the ease of a single-company solution, you can take care of your hardware, software, and human resources issues.

Administrating and Network Troubleshooting

The first of these is what most call a Local Area Network Administrator. This is a technology professional dedicated to operating the in-house network and troubleshooting the day-to-day computer issues that arise from the cubicle to the board room. A significant percentage of this person's time will be spent dealing with email-related issues.

Directory administration is a clerical, non-technical position, but it is intimately tied to the in-house technology issue. These individuals keep a thorough database of user moves and changes, new passwords and usernames, or the expiration of the same. This is a position that would become redundant in the case of outsourcing.

An even more costly position to fill is that of the email server specialist. This is a technical professional who may have little to no direct contact with employees, but without whose services the email system would probably cease to work in a matter of days. This position probably also acts as a liaison with the software or hardware vendors—a relationship that is indispensable.

Any number of additional staff will be required in various support roles if you chose to operate an in-house email system. Administrative, clerical, and technical, all work together to provide a seamless user experience for the other employees. If even one is removed, the chain of user support is weakened or broken, and even more oppressive financial strains will be placed on the company.

Secondary Costs

The obvious costs of in-house email systems are extensive, but the hidden or indirect costs can prove too much to result in a positive cost/benefit relationship between productivity and in-house email. Other costs can present themselves in a more indirect way, adding to the cost of not only in-house messaging, but the fixed costs of in-house IT, whether you choose to outsource your messaging capability or not.

It isn't exactly fair to call these "hidden costs." The costs themselves are real and openly visible in the budget, but they are often attached to budgets not directly associated with the purchase of new equipment or licenses.

These costs can pertain to IT departments, email management, or any number of additional administrative functions that surround the messaging system.

The obvious cost is of maintaining a staff to deal with the highly technical and specialized skill of server and email management. Even a modestly sized business attempting to operate their own email server will generally have multiple IT specialists devoted to several functions.

Software Costs, Training and Troubleshooting

User licenses aren't the only software cost. Antivirus software is absolutely essential for security if you choose to operate your own email servers. Not only will this software have to be deployed on the server, it will also have to be installed on every computer that uses that server. Each of these will require a license as well, and that means more per-user fees.

More major costs can be incurred when a large-scale software or hardware upgrade becomes necessary. This is often the reason businesses first start to investigate the outsourcing option. Technology doesn't stand still, and what was sufficient a year and a half ago may not only prove to be outdated in short order, but may be rendered completely incompatible with current standards.

Changing hardware or software also often means that employee training and troubleshooting in the first few months will continue to put a financial drain on your business. The system changeover itself will usually cost between $100 and $300 per user.

Hardware Expenses

The core of the cost of operating one's own email system is hardware. Many more machines are required to run such things as gateways, directory servers, calendar sync servers, or other applications shared between employees. As your company grows, you may need to acquire more servers to act as message switches, or systems which can network multiple email servers.

As your business grows still larger, a mainframe may be needed to handle the load. These computers are more expensive still, require full-time staff, and may incur the cost of replacement parts—not to mention the fixed cost of backup media. Even if you choose to utilize a maintenance contract for the new hardware, these usually run 18% to 20% of the actual purchase cost of the original hardware.

Moving beyond the hardware, the software can present an unexpected but significant financial burden on your business. When you move out of the realm of consumer software and into the world of commercial and enterprise software, the price leaps by orders of magnitude.

Considering this, the costs of email management software that runs on the server can be relatively modest. In a pricing model that usually calls for licensure and payment on a per-user basis, the costs average out to roughly $80 per user mailbox in addition to an initial setup fee for the software.

Necessary Computer Costs

Many of these costs will be incurred whether you choose to outsource your email or not. Your employees will always need their desktop computers, printers, and Internet connectivity. Each computer will require an operating system, as well as the systems running on file servers and other machines on the network.

Together, these comprise the cost of running technology in a business as it directly relates to the systems and software necessary to its performance and maintenance. The cost of the entire infrastructure will vary depending on the size of your company, but most estimates place the cost of in-house operation at between $3,000 and $6,000 per user.

Email itself is a cost that will be relational to the number of employees using it. On average, the amount of time employees spend on email is relative to the amount of time they spend at their computers. The email traffic will also be related to overall network traffic. As a matter of fact, the costs of in-house network and email support and maintenance will be relative to the size of your business.

How Outsourcing Saves Money

It shouldn't be difficult to see that outsourcing can give a major boost to your company's productivity and free up time for your staff, but this is just one of the many ways that email outsourcing can save you money. In this section, we will discuss the various costs and cost reductions associated with email outsourcing.

The Obvious Costs

The most obvious costs associated with maintaining your own email are associated with the acquisition and maintenance of the necessary hardware. The email servers alone can run into the tens—and even hundreds—of thousands of dollars. The most basic messaging or email server will maintain all of the requisite components to function effectively and reliably for a small business. With plenty of hardware resources and disk space, a high-end PC that can be used as an email server will cost between $15,000 and $20,000. Dedicated servers running UNIX—systems normally used for larger businesses—can exceed $200,000. While these machines are exceptionally reliable, this is a cost that most small businesses are unwilling or unable to shoulder.

The biggest cost associated with maintaining in-house email relates to a set of technology called a "computing platform." This platform consists of personal computers on individual desks, network equipment, the LAN (Local Area Network) itself, printers, servers, and the software that runs it all. This infrastructure has to be maintained and funded, and this is the most significant—and obvious—source of expense.

Back-Ups and Protection

Complete Backups

A company that offers anything less than complete backup and logs is not worth your time or money. What good is an outsourced mail system if you’re at risk for losing saved emails, important address books and other important files at every turn? It is simply not worth the stress and risk. That’s why an outsource company that guarantees backups and logs for your system is essential. When looking for this feature in a service provider, be aware of storage space usage and limitations. Depending on the types of messages your company sends and receives—the content and nature of the attachments—you might need an extraordinary amount of space. Be sure that the contractor can provide for that space, and perhaps more importantly, be sure that the ability to back up completely is included in the base price, not an additional monthly fee because of larger usage requirements.

Virus and Spam Protection

One of the major reasons companies often switch over to an outsourced email service is because of the comprehensive virus and spam protection. Most people have experienced the influx of spam in recent years. You may have even accidentally downloaded a virus or trojan because of the spam onslaught. While this can be a nuisance or worse in the case of personal computing, it is completely unacceptable in a business environment. The reason is not that employees should not be opening such emails. Rather, it is unacceptable to allow your workplace network to become that vulnerable to spam and viruses. Security on office computers should be one of your top priorities. And because one of the most vulnerable aspects of office computers is the email system and server, finding a company to outsource with that can keep your spam and virus protection up-to-date is worth any hassle you may experience transferring over to the new system.

In regard to specific security features to look for in an outsourcing company, be sure that at the very least, the contractor offers SSL or Secure Socket Layer. This is a very common security protocol, and while it is effective, it may be that your company requires even more security. In this case, ask about other security precautions, such as a division of storage at the server level. This is a simple mechanism by which even if a hacker can enter one server, not all of the data will be compromised. For instance, email addresses might be stolen, but not the content of the emails.

A Streamlined System is Always Better

Simply put, the more excess you can remove from your email systems, the better off you are likely to be. Are there too many email addresses cluttering up your company directory? Are general addresses like “info@yourcompany.com” being forwarded to the correct recipients, or are they getting lost in the shuffle? A full overhaul of your email system makes for a great opportunity to reorganize your communications systems to ensure that they are functioning smoothly and effectively.

Making Use of Features

Is everyone in your office making full use of the available applications of your email program? Are you? Just because employees are effectively sending and receiving messages doesn’t mean they are fully versed in the specifics of a given email application. The newest applications have features that can radically increase productivity and efficiency, but only if you investigate them and make a point of using them.

Use your email changeover as an opportunity to retrain your employees thoroughly in everything they need to know about your email system. Does everyone know how to attach documents to messages? Copy messages to multiple recipients? Organize messages into folders? Make use of common folders and organizational tools? An overall changeover makes a great time for re-training and explanations, so don’t let it slip by.

Security Concerns of Email

Another consideration when enumerating the benefits of email outsourcing is security. Some surveys indicate that businesses devote up to 20% of their annual budgets to IT security concerns, including spam, viruses, and other breaches of security. Even with this high number, most businesses which handle their own email are ill-equipped to create an effective security plan that is still efficient.

Viruses, trojans, and technology itself are constantly changing and evolving. The investment in the hardware to maintain an in-house email system and a corresponding security plan will demand a return, though by the time that return is realized, the standards will have changed again and will demand a further investment. This kind of spiral of evolving security concerns and technology do not allow for the kind of flexibility that is essential in today's business world.

This is a major motivation for outsourcing email. The increased flexibility that accompanies outsourcing to a dedicated email management contractor can be absolutely liberating to a business generally, and to an IT department specifically. What had been a major drain on finances and human resources, can now be accomplished with a single representative who will liaise with the service provider.

What Email Outsourcing Does for a Company

The maintenance and management of a company's email servers has become a major expense and an endeavor with major consequences and costs of failure. Something that most employees take for granted, or consider to be as simple as a telephone, is actually a major cost and potential headache. After all, email is like a telephone, but imagine moving the entire telephone company into your company's server room and paying them out of your own pocket. Not very efficient, really.

Wouldn't it be better if email management was more like the telephone company? You pay your share, and the necessary maintenance and engineering is accomplished off-site by experts and professionals. Your business reaps the benefits, and the headaches are handled somewhere else, by people whose job it is to solve the problems that cause those headaches.

This is essentially what email outsourcing does for a company. It removes the most troublesome elements of handling your own servers and frees up staff to devote time and resources to more important projects.

Benefits of Outsourcing Email

Email is the undisputed lifeblood of business today. Everyone in a 21st century business interfaces with email in some way during the course of a business day. Email is used for every element of the business cycle, from production to management, and everyone who uses it expects availability and reliability. To most, email seems like the most simple kind of computer system. Click "send" and magic happens. Most IT departments can provide for those expectations and demands as well—until something goes wrong.

Any number of things can go wrong unexpectedly in a system that is anything but "magic." In fact, email is a complicated digital device developed over more than three decades of use and evolution. There are viruses and trojans, any number of which could be accidentally introduced to your company's network by an innocent, unsuspecting employee or a malicious hacker. With a single unexpectedly busy day of business, your servers could be overwhelmed and crash. Even something like a power outage can bring an entire corporation to a grinding halt. While a few people are diverted from the necessary functions of business to trying to bring email back online, productivity suffers and essential projects are delayed indefinitely.

Deciding if Outsourcing is the Right Choice

Let's begin with a few basic questions that will be answered throughout this chapter.

First, will outsourcing provide your business with greater efficiency? Will the elimination of the email maintenance workload free up employees to do more valuable and productive things?

Second, will an outsourcing firm provide your business with enough security? Ideally, outsourcing should be a means by which more security is achieved, not a reduction in your security standards.

Third, will outsourcing be cost effective? One of the major motivations for outsourcing is cost savings, but remember that cost savings in an area of such vital importance should not be at the expense of safety and security.

Fourth, and finally, will outsourcing your email result in newfound flexibility and freedom? Or will the remote management of your most essential communication function be a burden?

Deciding to Outsource

According to current statistics, on an average working day in the United States, more than 2.8 billion emails are sent by more than 130 million workers. If we look at the question globally, there are more than 30 billion emails sent in an average 24-hour period. These numbers are rising at a steady rate of roughly 16% per year, and show no signs of slowing or leveling off.

With these numbers in mind, it seems a fair assumption that email and other electronic messaging methods are the essential core of business communication in the 21st century. There can be no return to the days of paper letters and telephone conversations—email isn't just here to stay, it's caused an undeniable paradigm shift in business.

Let's look at a few more statistics. Of 400 companies surveyed, 80% of employees felt that email was a more valuable mode of communication than the telephone. In addition, 74% felt that the loss of email capability was a bigger hindrance to productivity than the loss of telephone service.

Even with these numbers in mind, email service is usually handled in-house by a small number of IT professionals on equipment that may not be state-of-the-art. In-house email is often inefficient and, despite the best intentions of the office techie, poorly managed.

As such an essential element of your business, the management and maintenance of your email systems is of paramount importance. It is the literal lifeblood of your business. So how do you go about deciding to outsource such a vital element of the business cycle?

The Body of the Email

The Body

The body of an email contains raw text. This text, even when formatted, is actually just raw ASCII text until it is received by a client and any specific formatting in HTML is translated and applied.

There are certain advantages to using HTML formatting in an email. The first is that many users feel the aesthetics of a fully formatted email are more appealing. Additionally, metadata, inline links, and hypertext can augment the informative and data-based value of an email. Emphasis is also made easier and more standard with traditional formatting such as underlining and italicizing. Formatting in plain text follows different conventions that are accepted, but not necessarily universally known or standardized.

HTML formatting does come with a few disadvantages as well, including a significant increase in the email size and the potential for incompatibility with older email clients. The most significant drawback of an HTML-formatted email is the potential for security breaches which may occur if HTML code is intentionally inserted with the express purpose of introducing a Trojan Horse.

The Format of an Email

Email messages contain several parts. What follows is a discussion of these components.

The Header

This field contains a great deal of information about the sender of an email, the intended destination, and the intended recipient. The header field contains sub-headers that can include summaries, sender, receiver, various IP addresses and server names. Emails can often be traced by using the information in the header.

A few other fields one is likely to see if the header is analyzed would look like this:

• CC: carbon copy
• BCC: blind carbon copy
• Received: Tracking information generated by mail servers that have previously handled the message
• Content-Type: Information about how the message has to be displayed
• Reply-To: Address that should be used to reply to the sender
• References: Message-ID
• In-Reply-To: Message-ID of the message that this is a reply to

It's important to note that the "To:" field does not contain the actual recipient of the email. Similarly, the "From:" field cannot be used to determine who an email is actually from. These fields are for the convenience of the end-user; the actual sender and recipient data is contained in the header. The metadata in the header can be used to determine an email's actual origin, but some malicious users can "spoof" the To: and From: fields in order to create a means by which to send an apparently innocent email and introduce a trojan Horse into your company's system.

Many service providers have methods of cross-checking the header's metadata and referencing the actual sender. These security measures do help to reduce the threat of spoofing an email address. If you are considering outsourcing your email, it's important to ask if the contractor has a method of dealing with this particular security concern.

A Brief Example of How it Works

Email is not a difficult mechanism to understand. Any business owner writes numerous emails in an average day. The SEND button is clicked and the email arrives at its destination. What follows is a brief discussion of what happens in the nearly instantaneous electronic time between.

Imagine composing an email and clicking send. After this, the program being used to compose the email reformats it in a way that the Internet can understand. It includes a lot of information in the header that most users never see. The program then ships the email off to the server using the SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which was discussed in the definitions section above.

The server looks at the email and decides where it should go. The email address shows the local user before the @ symbol, and after shows the domain, or the more general location for delivery. A few other things happen in the server at this point as well. The domain name is translated to a number through the Domain Name Server or DNS, and the delivery information is cross-referenced with the MX record to be sure of the delivery location.

The email is sent to the server at the correct address, where it waits for the recipient to open his email program and log into the server. After this, the server moves the email from its storage to the client computer and it can finally be read.

With all of this said, there are many variations that can affect this description. This is the way email is transferred in the majority of instances, though an individual business's case may be different.

One thing to consider is whether this is an inter-office email or an intra-office email. If, for example, you are only sending the email down the hall, it’s possible that your company's own email server would handle the entire transaction and the email would never be reformatted for receipt by another type of email server. It may happen instantaneously and in-house. If this is desirable for some reason specific to your business, outsourcing your email will change this dynamic, and so it's something that should be closely considered.

Another thing which would change the dynamic and which should be considered when contemplating outsourcing, is the shift to web mail from your standard email clients (such as Outlook Express or Eudora). Shifting to web mail will create a different workflow for the email transfer.

How Email Really Works

The History of Email

Email is a system that was actually in existence before the "Internet" as we know it today. According to some sources that discuss the construction of the modern Internet, email was actually useful, if not essential, in the development and creation of the Internet.

The first multi-user network was developed in 1961 by MIT and was called the "Compatible Time Sharing System." This early network allowed users to store files on a central server from remote locations by dialing in to the server by way of modems. Email was first utilized in 1965 as a means of communication between those logged onto the multi-user computer network simultaneously from their remote terminals.

This system of communication between time-sharing users on the same system was soon expanded to include other systems which were tied together in the earliest iteration of the Internet—the Department of Defense's ARPANET, in 1969. Ray Tomlinson, a developer working with the new electronic mail system, was the first to use the @ symbol in email addresses. It was used as a means of separating a user name from the name of the system on which they were working. The use of this symbol continues more than 35 years later.