You need electricity to run your business. You need a telephone. You need email. If I suggested you set up your own power station to generate the electricity needed to run your legal practice, or set up your own satellite to make and receive telephone calls, you would dismiss the suggestions as fanciful. This is because electricity and telecommunications are utilities that you have on demand through a simple monthly or quarterly payment. Is email really any different? Email has become increasingly important in recent years and is now an absolute necessity for operating your business, as important as the telephone. You wouldn’t invest in your own power station or satellite, so why invest in the equipment necessary to run your own email service? The time has come when you now have a choice as to how to manage and pay for your email service.
The traditional model of email is an on-premise, in-house solution. You invest in your own servers and perpetual software licenses, and then manage and support the system through employing your own IT staff or by contracting with a local PC and network support company. When you are managing your own email system on-site you are responsible for data back-up, hardware maintenance, licensing and software upgrades.
For all firms and chambers, large and small, the conventional approach to email must now be challenged by the availability of on-demand hosted email systems.
Hosted Exchange
The most popular solution for hosted email is Hosted Exchange, a secure centrally hosted version of Microsoft’s Exchange server. Hosted Exchange provides all the functionality of Microsoft Exchange plus a range of additional features that are on the whole too complex for in-house on-premise systems to install and manage. With Hosted Exchange you can access your email from anywhere, using either Outlook from your desktop or laptop, Outlook Web Access (a version of Outlook available through your web browser) or a Windows mobile or BlackBerry handheld. Nasstar plc, a company which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, has invested considerable time, experience and capital in a scalable and robust infrastructure to provide Hosted Exchange. The customer pays a monthly subscription fee based on usage, rather like a mobile phone bill where you are invoiced for what you have used.
Traditional vs hosted systems
Is a hosted email solution always the right answer? Not necessarily. If your firm or chambers has recently purchased new hardware and perpetual Microsoft Exchange licenses, these costs are not recouped by immediately moving to a hosted model. Larger firms or chambers with well-established IT departments that are necessary to support other aspects of the IT may also consider their in-house solution to be properly managed and supported.
In contrasting the two models, traditional vs hosted, it is helpful to consider some of the key requirements for a modern email system.
Back-up
A large amount of company data is stored on email as attachments. Data back-up is therefore a necessary part of any email solution. This places an additional burden on the in-house solution whereas a hosted solution takes care of the back-up headache, with all email data being hosted off-site in a secure location.
Mobile email
The last 12 months in particular have seen a large growth in the demand for BlackBerry devices and mobile phones that enable you to access your email on the move. To run BlackBerry Enterprise Server in-house requires a separate server from your main Exchange or Lotus Notes email server. Furthermore, you must buy perpetual software licensing for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and client access licenses. The burden therefore on the traditional on-premise solution is further investment in hardware, software and IT resource to manage and maintain the solution. A hosted exchange provider can supply your users with BlackBerry or, if some or all of the users prefer Windows mobile, a Windows mobile email service for a simply monthly subscription per user.
Internet connectivity
The hosted model requires that you have internet connectivity to access either Outlook or Outlook Web Access. Access to these is not possible therefore if your internet connection goes down. However, your mobile email solution will still be available, so users with a BlackBerry or smart phone will still be able to send and receive email since these use over the air connectivity to communicate with the Hosted Exchange system.
Junk and viruses
All email systems have to keep up to date with filtering out viruses and junk email, estimated to be approximately 90 per cent of all email now. Fortunately companies such as MessageLabs and SurfControl provide a solution, enabling you to relay all your inbound and outbound email through a filtering service that removes viruses and filters out junk email. These online scanning services are invariably used by both the traditional and hosted model of email provision. However, viruses and junk are part of the larger issue of email security, and a hosted model arguably delivers greater security for your email than an in-house model. Not only is your email data in a physically secure location (swipe card, PIN, biometric scan) but firewall and intrusion prevention systems of professional Hosted Exchange providers such as Nasstar are usually more effective than in-house systems.
Management
As Microsoft Exchange is the most popular email system used by firms and chambers, the switch from an on-premise solution to a hosted one is transparent and end users do not need any re-training as they continue to use the Outlook interface they are familiar with. Adding and removing users from a Hosted Exchange system should be straightforward. Some providers enable you to add or remove users through a management portal, so maintenance and housekeeping is easy. Alternatively, and many prefer this, you can instruct the hosting provider to make the changes. Professional providers will have to comply with the terms of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and this should define the time in which, for example, new users have to be provisioned. It should also guarantee you the up-time of the system and provide an effective remedy in the event of a breach. Make sure that you see the SLA of any potential provider of Hosted Exchange. Better still, ask for references from existing customers so you can get a feel for how effectively the provider meets with the terms of the SLA.
Software as a Service
Hosted Exchange is part of a much wider trend that Microsoft refer to as “Software as a Service” or “SaaS”. In essence SaaS means you pay monthly for hosted software and support rather than on-premise perpetual purchase. A crude analysis of hosting shows that the first wave of the internet saw businesses outsourcing their website to a hosting company. Email was the second key application to be outsourced, but now a full range of applications can be accessed from a central hosted service. Recently Google announced the launch of docs and spreadsheets, the start of its hosted applications suite. Nasstar plc recently launched its Desktop service, enabling you to access your Windows desktop, My Documents, company files, Microsoft Office and other applications from anywhere in the world. Nasstar is providing a software broadcasting service, enabling users to subscribe to different applications on a monthly basis and access them from anywhere.
Charles Black is CEO of Nasstar plc, a software broadcasting company that provides Hosted Exchange and mobile email. Before setting up Nasstar in 1998 Charles qualified as a barrister.
Email cb@nasstar.com.
