ZDNet, 2/15/6: Yes. You should outsource your e-mail

Posted by David Berlind @ 10:43 am

In response to yesterday's post about how Google may soon let you host your email systems (under your domain names) on its servers (powered by GMail), ZDNet reader JM James thinks I was off my rocker when I wrote:

In fact, I'm willing to bet that better than 90 percent of the businesses currently in-sourcing their email can't legitimately justify the practice.

But let's not put words in my mouth. There are other ways to outsource e-mail. Centerbeam for example would be happy to take over the management of your Exchange Servers (if that's what you have). According CenterBeam spokesperson Brian Johnson:

What we offer to do is the hard work for people that they can't afford to do themselves. We manage their Exchange Servers, their desktops, every point on the network, the temperature inside every server. When you have the infrastructure for thousands of customers, we can offer them a high level of service for very little money. We charge $45 per user per month. That covers desktop management (anti virus, backup and restore everyday, 24/7 800# dial up helpdesk, server management, email management, VPN services, etc.). The last thing a banker wants to do is have anybody on staff running an Exchange server. All a banker wants is more bankers and salespeople on staff. They don't want a Microsoft Certified Exchange Engineer on staff who is only available for one shift a day. Even if you do run an Exchange Server with three shifts of engineers 7 days a week, they'll be advising you on best practices such as backup and restore. They'll say you need a Storage Area Network (SAN) and need to send tapes to Iron Mountain everyday. The economic model for a banker to do that is very intimidating. But when you spread a best practice across thousands of customers, it allows a company like ours to offer the service the banker needs at a reasonable cost. We built a SAN. One storage area network that we build supports thousands of users. But none of those customers on their own could afford a SAN.

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