And an increasing number of companies like HOK are taking the same route: outsourcing messaging lock, stock and barrel.
“Most of our customers approach us looking for a lower cost alternative to what they have already,” said Cathie Frazzini, senior vice president of Sales & Marketing at USA.net, an email outsourcer. “They just don’t want to have to invest the time and energy in a major implementation, so they look to outsource their messaging instead.”
As well as reduced costs and maintenance headaches, the speed with which an outsourced messaging solution can be up and running, compared with an in-house solution, is often a major attraction.
“We were faced with some urgency as support for our CC-Mail system had ceased and it would have taken us some months to implement Exchange in-house,” said the IS manager of an Irvine, TX-based research company, who wished to remain anonymous.
Instead he chose BlueStar Solutions’ hosted Exchange service, which was up and running in just a few days.
“[W]e did this deal for the expertise that BlueStar could offer, and so as not to get distracted by an Exchange implementation. They have virus and spam protection skills that you can’t quickly acquire yourself.”
Like any outsourcing deal, outsourcing email involves handing over an important business function to a third party, and the decision on whether to do this, regardless of the benefits of doing so, comes down to a personal philosophy on the potential risks.
“It’s true that by outsourcing we are putting all our eggs in the USA.net basket,” said HOK’s Young, “but, in the end, by outsourcing our email we have a solution that is more reliable than we would have been able to provide in-house.”
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