* The case for outsourcing your messaging
Messaging is the backbone of most organizations, the communications medium that users would give up last. The vast majority of messaging systems are managed in-house on IT-managed servers or appliances, as are most anti-virus, anti-spam, secure messaging, archiving and other messaging-related systems.
There are a large number of vendors offering excellent products that are relatively easy to manage, that are priced attractively and that provide excellent functionality. That said, why does anyone manage their messaging systems in-house?
According to one source, there were 12 million wind-power water pumps across the Midwest in 1930. People generated their own electricity because there wasn’t an electrical distribution infrastructure. However, once the electrical grid became pervasive and electricity became reliable and cheap, many stopped generating their own electricity in favor of outsourcing.
The situation with messaging today is not dramatically different. There are a large and growing number of companies that provide outsourced messaging services of various types, from complete hosted messaging to simple anti-virus and anti-spam scanning for in-house servers. These services are generally very reliable, often offering uptime better than in-house managed systems.
Plus, many providers offer outsourced services that are less expensive than in-house managed systems. For example, Osterman Research calculates that for an organization of up to 2,500 employees it costs about $117 per user per year on average to provide just messaging security services in-house, or nearly $10 per user per month. Contrast this with the cost of outsourcing anti-virus and anti-spam filtering from a major managed service provider that charges about $2 per user per month for a 1,000-user customer.
We found in a recent survey that organizations expect to outsource more in the future for most types of messaging-related services, although most organizations don’t do so today and most won’t over the next couple of years. Many decision-makers are concerned about the financial viability of some providers, they are concerned about the security of message stores that are housed outside the corporate firewall, and they believe that it is less expensive to provide messaging services in-house.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on why outsourcing is or isn’t a good idea for your organization – please drop me a line at mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com
