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The Economics of E-Mail

Written by: Linda Jacobson

Article Overview: "E-mail is the single most important tool for business communication." Despite this, businesses may not step back to assess costs and cost-effectiveness of different types of e-mail systems. This article takes a look at the major e-mail options, their advantages and disadvantages. This topic is the second in our 2009 whitepaper series: "Making every IT dollar count!" The full whitepapers are available on our website.

The Economics of E-Mail

"E-mail is the single most important tool for business communication."

For many organizations, when their e-mail stops, their ability to conduct business stops too. About 80% of the intellectual property of a typical company passes through its e-mail server. There's a 72% chance of an e-mail failure in any company each year, lasting an average of 62 hours.

E-mail is set to grow by 68% in the next 5 years. And legal discovery is a growing consideration - making e-mail management more important.

The indirect costs of e-mail - mainly loss of productive time - are likely to be overlooked, even though they can be high.

Stand-alone e-mail is inexpensive and simple. In our opinion, the disadvantages of free services (e.g. Gmail, hotmail) for businesses outweigh the benefit of the small cost savings.

Collaborative e-mail is typified by Microsoft Exchange, and includes communications features such as shared calendars, tasks and contacts; smartphone and Outlook integration; and central management and storage.

Exchange servers can be maintained in-house or housed in a data center. Shared hosted Exchange means renting space on a hosted server that includes many other accounts.

Cost comparisons for hosted vs in-house Exchange are often published by Exchange hosting providers, and tend to be distorted. Caveat emptor!

Shared hosted Exchange can be considerably more expensive over time than in-house, which also allows control and flexibility.

Hosted Exchange (shared or not) is an excellent option for businesses with branches in different geographic locations, and shared hosted Exchange is good for very small companies that can't justify the cost of an in-house server.

Google Apps is an inexpensive alternative to Exchange, but has several disadvantages and doesn't work as well.

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Article Tags: business communication, calendars, caveat, central management, communications features, e mail management, exchange servers, flexibility, google, google apps, indirect costs, intellectual property, legal discovery, mail failure, mail server, microsoft exchange, outlook integration, productive time, smartphone, typical company



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