WHAT’S YOUR E-MAIL COSTING YOU?

Published 02.08.10  |  Category:  CIO Strategy  |  Posted by Maxwell Ramutla

E-mail - love it or hate it, its today’s way of communicating. In a relatively short space of time it’s become the de facto business communication tool too. But have you thought about how much its costing you?

 

Our reliance on e-mail communication has also spawned the concept of e-mail overload plaguing users and pressuring business to manage e-mail more effectively. Back in April 2008 already the New York Times was reporting that "E-MAIL has become the bane of some people’s professional lives" due to information overload. 

 

And it seems that this concept of overload that has “stolen” the attention in most organisations. Why? Well, when we lose e-mail access our staff simply stop working. You can see that, right?  But won’t you don’t physically see is all the business processes that also switch off because they rely on e-mail to function.

 

These disrupted workflows and processes are far less noticed but far more hard felt by the organisation. See these impact human resources, procurement and finance processes  and the impact in the long term.

 

Adding up the cost

 

Organisations very rarely step back and analyze the total cost to the business of running their e-mail. This is mostly because as a communication cost it’s a “softer” operational cost.

 

Yet understanding how much your current e-mail system costs, and how that all adds up, is the key to making changes, and managing the impact it has on the organisation.

 

When you can understand the risks your organisation faces and the costs of your mitigation products that you have then you can perform a true cost-benefit analysis.

 

And breaking out the costs of the typical mail solution can be quite surprising –especially when it’s a business critical service that is taken for granted, which the IT department is paying for.

 

Doing the numbers on how much your email is costing, will open your eyes to the costs involved. And even when you take a conservative stance, you can achieve a cost saving of between 45 to 90% by introducing an email-as-a-service solution.

 

So what makes up the cost?

The

Whether you’re assessing your current system, considering upgrading your system or outsourcing it to a service provider, the typical cost of e-mail includes so much more than the mail box.

 

There’s the upfront capital investment

So you first need hardware. And that costs. But the cost of your e-mail  infrastructure also has sunken costs. Few organisations can cope with a single e-mail server and adding policy management, archiving and risk management tools means adding systems to run them on. That costs.

 

 

 

The migration costs

Hardware only lasts so long and needs upgrading.  Constant repurchasing and migration every 3 – 5 years means that an archive in a commercial environment (requiring seven years worth of e-mail to be retained) implies up to three hardware upgrades to accommodate to increasing volume of data. Add in a share of the data centre costs – for space, power and cooling – and the cost shoot up.

 

And ongoing costs

Then there are upgrades to support new features, installation of software patches and integration with other systems.  If you’re using a virtual infrastructure you’ll need to be sure you have appropriate resources in your computer fabric that can be prioritized for e-mail, along with the right virtualized storage technologies. Then there’s the overlapping patchwork of risk management and policy tools required to keep e-mail running smoothly (and of course, many of those need their own hardware). All these cost.

 

Ensuring regulation & compliance

Messages need to be archived, as well as having appropriate disclaimers attached. The regulatory rules that apply will vary from message to message, so you’ll also need to implement a rules-based information lifecycle management (ILM) policy. And archiving is not just for the regulatory requirements, many organizations are retaining e-mails for internal governance and litigation protection. So now you’re adding the cost of implementing the appropriate search and audit tools for e-discovery, or just for unlocking the business value in historical e-mail. And then there’s the ever-increasing storage you need to put in place, as the number and size of messages and file attachments just keep on growing. More costs.

 

And protecting company information

Key business information needs to be protected, as does customer data. Adding data loss prevention to an existing e-mail solution means investing in, and integrating, additional hardware, software, and business processes. Even more costs.

 

And then there is support

Ongoing subscriptions and regular updates for all these tools add up. It’s also hard to manage just

how many licences you’ll need, and you can find that you’ve over-licensed, and that it’s next to impossible to be reimbursed by your suppliers. Service and support add to the price, and you’ll

need to keep track of your support agreements with your suppliers, as well as any service level

agreements.  

 

You’ll also need to make sure that your end users stay productive, and are not swamped with spam

and phishing messages, struggling with awkward rarely-used tools or waiting for unresponsive

servers (or for backup tapes to be delivered and loaded when they need to access archived

messages). E-mail is the lifeblood of the modern business, and it needs to be kept flowing –

cost effectively. But it costs.

 

 

So what’s the alternative?

 

Strangely while e-mail costs add up quickly and inadvertently, e-mail is not just about costs. The bigger picture is about accessibility to communication that is always available, predictable and scalable. With cloud based computing and virtual technologies e-mail management has in effect become about a service.

                  

Think of it like this - you are the President of the country and want a full view of all Ministries and all levels of government, you want communication at the push of a button, and you want to  ensure information is shared with the right people at the right time. Can you? Probably not.

 

But maybe you’re the CEO of a diversified company that needs to achieve transparency and efficacy in communication between company businesses to drive the company objectives. Is this possible? Probably not –  well not right now anyway, you might say.

 

What you need to see is that e-mail is no longer just about the technology.  It’s become about ensuring a service to the organisation.What’s more e-mail as a service is now possible.

 

 It’s also predictable and scalable.

 

A well designed cloud computing based e-mail service will scale automatically, giving you all the performance and storage that you need for your e-mail archives, security and management and you won’t need to worry about planned or unexpected downtime.

 

Instead of multiple point products that duplicate features or leave you unprotected in some areas, you’ll get a single service, a single interface and unified reports. Upgrades and updates are transparent, and you don’t need to employ dedicated support staff for the service.

 

What’s more you get to reduce your e-mail service to a single cost.

 

Now that’s worth thinking about.

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