Many industry leaders have written about the shift of email toward social media apps, such as Facebook and Twitter. In fact, analyst heavyweight Gartner recently predicted that the business benefits of social software platforms will lead to email being replaced as the primary means of interpersonal communication by 2014, with at least a fifth of organisations using them as their key communication medium by 2014.
Although tools such as Twitter offer a way of having real-time conversations with peers, customers and clients, and direct messaging means one can in principle take the conversation offline or out of the public domain, why are so many businesses still blocking sites like Facebook during work times? It’s ultimately because they can have a massive impact on productivity. Organisations will continue to rely heavily on email, whatever new trends emerge.
Another big problem with social media is the issue around the privacy and security of information particularly critical in a business environment. It doesn’t have the same level of protection as email, which is guarded by SSL to provide secure connections to pop up servers and encryption of messages. Surely, as hackers continue to attack social media accounts, it (social media) is not mature enough to replace email in the business world?
As the communication landscape continues to evolve organically and advances in technology such as Cloud Computing become more widespread, we are already seeing a shift in how email is managed. In addition to this, legislation which requires data to be stored for several years makes hosting email a costly and complex affair. This is further driving the demand for outsourcing.
Email is clearly an important tool for communication, but it is just part of the infrastructure and not part of the company’s IP, which drives market share and delivers competitive edge. This means email needs to adapt to businesses’ requirements, not the other way around.
Finding the right fit
It is apparent that to be successful, businesses must focus their efforts on their own core competencies. In any business, a portion of the company’s time and finances are invested in establishing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure (e.g. servers and storage). In most cases, this infrastructure is necessary for doing business but does not directly generate revenue. In essence, the infrastructure is a necessary expense.
So, if a company can minimise the time spent on managing in-house IT infrastructure such as email, it can focus its resources on core competencies and innovation of products and services.
Outsourcing email allows businesses to avoid the initial startup costs of deploying an email server and reduces the ongoing costs—since providers typically divide server resources among multiple clients. This means that several companies share the expense of the hardware and software, as well as the monitoring and maintenance costs, rather than a single business covering the entire cost. Also, time that would be dedicated to managing the email server can now be deployed to support more strategic functions.
If you believe that email is the right fit for your business but need it to be more flexible, a move to the Cloud could be the best option. Before embarking on a project like this, however, there are some key things to consider:
- What is the total cost of ownership for my current email solution?
- Are there any regulations in my industry that require data and document retention?
- Of my employees, how many leverage email as a significant portion of their workflow?
- Of the following list, which email features are critical or important to my business?
- Use Microsoft Outlook to check and send email
- Contacts, tasks and notes
- Send and receive meeting invites
- Share and collaborate calendars with co-workers in Microsoft Outlook
- Scheduling assistant to coordinate meetings
- How important is mobile access and what features do I need on the go?
- Check and send email from BlackBerry
- Sync outgoing email messages on BlackBerry
- Sync folders on BlackBerry
Sync calendar, contacts, tasks and notes with BlackBerry
The future is Cloudy
The move to a more effective, flexible communication method is being driven by a big shift in corporate computing, called Computing-as-a-Service. This approach which includes hosting, SaaS and Cloud computing, enables businesses to pay for computing resources on-the-go. If email is hosted in the Cloud, it means mailbox requirements can be scaled very quickly to meet changing business needs.
Email is a way of life - many of us have a business email address, a personal email address, a spam email address, and more. It is doubtful there is a person in the digital world that lacks an email account. The truth is that email is still the preferred way to communicate. Social media is a complimentary tool.
Instead of worrying about whether or not email is dead, businesses should focus on their core competencies and how they can add value to the business – not which tools to use – remove that headache from the business completely. Moving email to the Cloud will enable a company to compete better with a faster, more flexible approach to communication.
If the cost and productivity benefits of Cloud based email are not enough to convince you, what about recovering data in the case of a law suit or disaster – I wouldn’t want to have important information stored in a social media app in that situation, would you?
Cameron Nouri is Email & Apps Evangelist at Rackspace.
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