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.

Trojans and Filters

Trojan

A trojan, or "trojan horse" is not really a virus, but it does behave like one. A trojan is a malicious piece of software that is introduced to the computer by an action of the user. It arrives as an email attachment or as part of a program, and under the guise of performing an actual function or doing something else, is introduced to the system by being installed by a user on that system.

Once in the computer, a trojan often opens a "back door" to allow remote access to the computer by the originators of the trojan.

A trojan gets its name from the legend of the Trojan Horse, which came in through the front gates while secretly containing an invading army.

Content Filters

Content filters are programs that restrict access by system users to certain Internet content, such as specific websites or categories of websites. Such content filtration is increasingly being used in schools to restrict student access to social networking sites, and in businesses to limit use of the company network for personal web surfing.

Spam and Security

Spam

Spam is electronic junk mail which is sent to numerous recipients in the hope that one might respond. As apposed to UCE, or "unsolicited commercial email," Spam is often illicit in nature, and has come to be a major commercial and legal issue in the world of Internet commerce today.

Most email providers offer some form of spam-blocking with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Antivirus

Antivirus software is a system that prevents the introduction of infectious programs, such as viruses and trojans, into a network or individual computer. These malicious programs are often introduced through email.

Antivirus software works by scanning files to see if they match known "definitions" or descriptions of existing viruses and then isolating and eliminating these elements of infectious code. Some antivirus software also scans the system to see if there is any suspicious behavior, such as alterations in important system files, or the use of uncommon or unusual ports that may be used by the virus to send data.

Black List, White List and Grey Listing

Black List

Blacklisting is a means of controlling access to a service or system, or a means of restricting those on the "blacklist" from contacting those on a particular email system. Blacklists can relate to individuals, or in the case of firewalls and access control systems, they can relate to websites or entire domains.

White List

A white list is the opposite of a blacklist. It is a means of allowing a select list of people (in this case, email from people) through an access control system. Messages from those on a white list would pass the blocking mechanism, while those not on the white list would be sent to trash or bounced.

Grey Listing

Grey listing (or gray listing) is a system by which an email is received and bounced back to the server. If the email is then resent by the sender, the system will then allow the email to be sent through to the recipient. This is based on the assumption that a spammer will not resend email, and so only legitimate email will be retried by the sender.

This system of temporary rejection is a commonly used antispam mechanism.

Exim, Blackberry and Web Mail

Exim

Exim is a mail transfer agent that is license-free, and that is known for high degrees of flexibility and extensive configurability. The first version of Exim was written in 1995 and follows the design model set forth by earlier versions of Sendmail. Since the version 4 release, no security issues have been found with the Exim system.

Blackberry

This is the ubiquitous business sidekick mobile device. Originally released in 1999, the BlackBerry has gone on to change the way that many people do business. Essentially, it is an email client, with multiple capabilities including, but not limited to, the transmission and receipt of electronic messaging, telephone, GPS, Web access, Bluetooth, and WiFi.

Web Mail

Web mail, or web-based email, is an email system that is intended to be accessed through internet browsers on the world wide web.

Beginning with the enormous early success of Hotmail, web mail has gone on to be the primary provider of email addresses on the internet. Due in large part to its advantages over traditional mail, the success of Gmail, Yahoo. Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail continues to expand. A primary advantage over traditional mail is the ability of a user to access email from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.

MS Exchange, Qmail and Sendmail

Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server is an email management server widely used by companies that also employ Microsoft's Enterprise Solutions. The software supports electronic mail, calendar synchronization and management, contact management and task management. It supports mobile access to this information, as well as web-based access.

Qmail

Qmail is an MTA that runs on the UNIX operating system. It was written by Dan J. Bernstein as a replacement for Sendmail, touting more security, and the added benefit of being a license-free product.

Sendmail

Sendmail is an MTA that is open-source and license-free and that runs on UNIX. Its drawbacks, and reason for eventual replacement in many areas by Qmail, lie in security issues and vulnerabilities. Sendmail is a direct "descendant" of an original mail delivery system utilized on the ARPANET in its early days.

MTA

This is an application sometimes known as "mail transfer agent" or "mail transport agent", which can be thought of as a busy postal worker. It receives email and forwards it to outbound mail for delivery, and also manages incoming messages.

Some of the more popular mail server programs—software running on a dedicated email server—are Qmail, Exim, Sendmail, and Microsoft Exchange Server.

IMAP

Internet Message Access Protocol is a protocol for accessing email from a local server. It works in much the same way as POP3, but allows users to see information about the email (such as subject and sender) without downloading the mail to the local client.

IMAP also allows users to create and manipulate folders on the server itself, which is useful for further customization of mail-handling capabilities.