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Why bother with professional in-house email systems? It’s a very good question. Why on earth would anyone want to invest in an expensive, dedicated server, load up a proprietary business email package like MS Exchange, Lotus Notes or similar, pay a man (or a woman) to set it up and then train everyone on how to use it? Oh, and look after it every day thereafter too. There are many companies out there that do it every week and think no more about it. It is worth having a think about the initial and ongoing costs of such an investment. Analysis reveals that it’s actually quite hard to justify such a big investment, particularly for a small to medium sized company, not to mention all the patching, software updates and daily maintenance required for an in-house mail beast. And yes, the Email server really can be a monster, causing problems and headaches for anyone with the responsibility of looking after it; feeding in the patches and updates and anti-spam and anti virus solutions that are essential fodder for modern mail systems. Then, of course, there’s the black day when all the data disappears. The mail server goes down and everyone in the company is immediately on your back demanding that their mailboxes are reinstated now! Their individual need is always the most urgent (everyone says the same thing) and the mail that’s been lost is simply vital for a major contract or a critical business deal. Yes, there’s always the back-up, just so long as you remembered to back-up. Then there’s the question of who to blame for the loss of business and management time and …OK, you get the picture. I’ll shut up now. It’s probably causing you a headache just thinking about the series of horrible catastrophes and aftershocks that would materialise if your in-house mail server died unexpectedly, and worse still, you lost all the information. Admittedly there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the technology of mail servers, and certainly the latest mail packages do everything that companies would ever need - often far more than you would expect. The real issue is the management and the support of the server and the software. If your company is a 24/7/365 company with people requiring access to their mail from the office and from home, as well as remote use on handheld devices, it stands to reason that you will need to buy in suitable, talented, experienced, 24-hour support and maintenance, which, of course, for the 24-hour company means three people! Ouch. That’s a big cost you perhaps did not expect on top of the server and the multiple software licenses. You will doubtless argue that you have full control with an in-house system, and of course you would be right. For a very large corporation with massive IT resource, it probably makes sense to look at the option of an in-house system, particularly if you are already paying for that professional IT expertise. However, for a smaller company, the luxury of absolute control can end up costing you a lot more than you bargained for, and bringing with it levels of responsibility and headaches for which you really have no extra time. So, what’s the alternative? Do away with email altogether and return to the quill? I hardly think so. Email is here to stay and will continue to develop in many forms. And it is in the development of online managed Exchange services where the huge advances have been made in both efficiency and cost. Professional hosting companies such as Rackspace Limited are now offering fully featured email hosting packages based on banks of dedicated servers operating in climate-controlled, highly secure data centres, which are manned by level three professional support staff, providing 24-hour support 365 days of the year. They work with managed mail systems 24 hours a day and know them inside out. Accordingly, any possible problems are rapidly identified before they materialise in failure and are often solved even before you know are aware of them. As a customer of an email hosting solution provider like Rackspace all you need to worry about is the initial set up of your mail accounts and the size of the individual mailboxes. Thereafter everything involved in the operation, maintenance, software updates, server patching, anti-virus, prevention of DOS attacks, and backup of all your mail and attachments becomes a part of the overall package. As a professional business user I am sure you can begin to see the benefits unfolding. All that hardware and maintenance responsibility is wholly down to the company providing the email hosting service. They are also responsible for the day to day operation and to ensure that your service is up and running 24/7/365. And, yes, thank the heavens; it’s down to them if it goes down! The great thing is that being consummate professionals and living ‘email hosting’ every hour of every day, they will probably have the package up and running in an hour even if the server has died! And all your mail will have been restored from the permanent back-up. Yes, of course it costs money, but if you want one of the world’s most secure email hosting solutions, accessible from wherever you are in the world with full mobile compatibility (Iphone, Blackberry and the like), and no fear of losing any valuable data, contacts or messages, then you have to go out on a very long limb if you opt to try and justify to retain an in-house solution. The advent of cloud hosting has made lower cost email hosting packages totally accessible to the majority of business users, even much smaller companies. Not every company wants all the functions associated with Microsoft Exchange – shared calendars, out of office etc. And companies like Rackspace are now offering businesses viable, cost-reduced, fully managed email hosting packages that provide all the care and attention necessary for full reliability and availability, but without the non-essential frills. Comparisons are available online to help you choose the most appropriate email hosting solution for your company, and I’m willing to bet that when you have all the facts at your fingertips and you compare the real costs with those of a comparable in-house solution you will say thanks very much for this article, it saved me a fortune. To find out what Rackspace can do for your business, visit their Email Hosting website.
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