April 22, 2010 - Doug Hanchard
Companies are facing cutbacks in IT. Every service IT service is reviewed. Email is evolving with application add-ons and integration to other apps. Instead of developing it in-house, should Cloud based email solutions available from a variety of providers be reviewed and considered?
The City of Los Angeles recently signed with Google to outsource its email requirements and needs. It offered several benefits to the city including reduced costs. Google will host all of the City of Los Angeles employee's email and possible add on applications such as Calendar, Document sharing and other apps. Questions remain surrounding the contract between Google and the city including burning questions concerning public safety agencies how is Google securing sensitive information.
Outsourcing your email services to a third party should raise the same concerns in some cases. The checklist shown on the right are some of the issues to assess your company's risk tolerance.
A small firm with less than 1,000 employees, outsourcing your email is a viable option to consider. Security, privacy and access flexibility will depend on employee mobility needs. Outsourcing email to a third party offers several benefits including lower costs.
Cloud based email is not for everybody. Sensitive information can potentially fall into the wrong hands. Recent events in China concerning security of Google's GMail service highlights the potential risk.
If your firm is international in nature, thorough review of the laws of country your employees are based is a mandatory checklist item by the management.
One solution is a hybrid model which consists of a private Virtual Private Network (VPN) linked third party email provider that hosts your email application services with other outsourced clients that maintain separation of Email servers but share network resources that offer secured internet ported access for mobile road warriors while simultaneously offering corporate LAN performance at the office.
This option reduces equipment and tech support costs within your organisation and future proofs your email needs. Add modules such as unified messaging, calendar, and other 'extensions' can be added as required without the need for hosting the services yourself.
Potential drawbacks include immediate support response and service
level agreements which don't meet your expectations.
Checklist:
Benefits:
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