For many businesses –
particularly public companies and those in healthcare, financial
services, law and insurance – monitoring, storing and retrieving
email messages is now as important as keeping their financial
records in order.
Regulatory requirements, court requests for
e-discovery, and industry standards are having a profound effect on
how businesses manage electronic communications. Failing to
adequately store and retrieve emails may expose these businesses and
their officers to penalties, fines, and legal consequences such as
destruction of evidence charges and adverse judgments.
Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Affects
Virtually all
organizations that deal with electronic patient healthcare
information are affected.
The need for an email archive & retrieval ability.
Summary
All patient information, authorizations, policies,
procedures and contracts with business associates must be retained
for at least 6 years.
Financial Investment - In
order to host their own exchange, a company would need to
purchase all of the hardware, including everything needed to
create the security and redundancy level needed for the company.
In addition, it would be necessary to purchase Exchange
software, and each user would need a separate user license. In
addition, there has to be a physical location for the server, as
well as personnel to administer and manage the exchange service.
IT Resources - Maintenance
of an in-house exchange system can often take well over 80% of
the senior technician's time, making it necessary to have IT
personnel specifically for the exchange.
Deployment - With a
dedicated IT staff, it can take as long as 30 days for a company
to get their internal exchange system fully operational.
Reliability - For an
Exchange system to be fully reliable there needs to be
sufficient hardware and software for the job, and personnel to
oversee all of it. Without redundancy, for example, a server
crash can create email interruptions, which leads to a loss of
email service and a loss of productivity. The typical Exchange
hosting service uses server clusters to offer a guaranteed
uptime, usually 99% or better.
Security - Protecting the
security of the exchange system requires constant care, making
it a daunting task for many IT departments. Exchange is set up
with enhanced security features. For example, Exchange has new
anti-spam features, along with having integrated Outlook's
ability to block senders, and it has new virus scanning
features. Additionally, Exchange is set up to automatically log
off Outlook Web Access and to block attachments.
See below for the estimated cost for an ARC
in house Exchange Server.
Outsourcing
Smaller Firms Lead the Way
Small companies—those with fewer than 100 employees—have
gotten the jump on outsourcing e-mail, IDC’s Levitt notes.
More than half of all small-business e-mail accounts are now
outsourced or under consideration for outsourcing, according
to a recent IDC survey. Lack of IT resources tends to drive
small companies toward e-mail outsourcing.
The Arthritis Foundation is a case in
point. Four years ago, “we were spending all of our time
keeping the systems running, not bettering the foundation’s
goals,” recalls VP of Strategy Management and CIO Marla
Davidson. “We realized we could get a lot more depth from
our staff by using a managed service provider for those
operations,” she says. Outsourcing also reduced the risk of
failure: “We had just one e-mail admin, so if that person
was on vacation or got sick, we would just hold our breath,”
she says. Now, the foundation gets 24/7 coverage it didn’t
have before.
“Our costs declined and our service
levels improved. Plus we get more disciplined management and
better security,” Davidson says, letting the foundation now
support some Sarbanes-Oxley rules that it couldn’t afford
before. (While not obligated to follow them, executive
management saw several as beneficial governance approaches,
she says.)
Conclusion
There are many Exchange Services
available. Selecting the correct one is critical. In
my research for ARC/VRF I find the following to be true:
Choosing an Exchange company based on price alone is
flirting with disaster. If you where to go the way of an
Exchange Server Service I would highly recommend using the
best service possible with a proven track record. That
service would be
RackSpace. Although
they may be the most expensive, they guarantee their
services and "up time". On the message boards, blogs
and tech website all reports are complaints of the cost vs
service, all admitting that they are getting great service.
Now if you can get your heart rate
under control - Please read below.
On the other hand, there is one more
option. Google
Apps. Google Apps brings together essential
services to help your business, school, group or family
communicate and collaborate more effectively. These services
are powerful, easy to set up, require no maintenance, and
you can get them for free. Everything is unified by the
Start Page, a central place for your users to preview their
inboxes and calendars, access your essential content, and
search the web. Administrators can choose to deploy a mix of
the communication and collaboration products.
Google Apps offers
a
Premier Edition
that
would offer ARC the features needed to
become email compliant. This edition cost $50.00 per user
per year. Currently ARC/VRF have 73 active email accounts.
80 Apps = $4000. yearly or $333. a month. VRF qualifies for
the free edition as a non profit
501(c)(3) organization
which would lower the ARC account by
eleven.
Premier
Edition includes: Gmail,
Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites
(Used as ARC/VRF Intranet only to be seen and used by
members only) and a Start Page.
-
99.9% uptime
guarantee for email
- Conference room and resource
scheduling
- No preset user account limit
- Mobile access - iPhone,
BlackBerry ect.
- Policy management and message
recovery by Postini - compliance.
-
APIs to integrate with your existing infrastructure
-
IMAP for Gmail - End User can use MS Outlook &
sync to Gmail
