Small Business Tech Tips

In my work, I’m often asked by clients if they should set up their own email server and manage it or have it managed in the cloud and pay monthly fees to do so. This is an excellent question with no one answer for all businesses. The real answer is, what works best for your business is what you should go with.

Here are some things to think about when trying to decide.

1) Infrastructure - if you have your own email server then you’re going to need to invest in a server. You’re going to have to care for that server as you would any other. It must be in a place that doesn’t get too warm and always has a supply of electricity. You’ll need a UPS to keep it running when the power goes out for a few minutes and contingency plans if it should ever stop working.

2) Backup - In addition to the server, you’ll need backup software that is aware of your email server’s specific database. You’ll also need a place to store those backups such as tapes or USB drives. You will also need a backup and disaster recovery plan which would include your keeping a copy of your backed up data in a location not too close to where your server is stored.

3) Availability - If you host your own email server then you’re going to have to make sure that it’s always reachable. Email has entered the realm of mission critical in most organizations. To have it be unavailable will cause some or all of your staff great angst. You’ll need to make sure that it’s sitting on a very reliable Internet connection and that it’s running on a server with redundancy built in so that if any one component of the server breaks down, the email is still functional.

4) Anti Virus – You’ll need a good corporate based anti virus solution. Even if your email is running in a non-Windows environment, you’ll still need this to prevent viruses from spreading to your users or their recipients.

5) Spam concerns – You’ll have to take spam controls very seriously. If your server is flagged by others as a spammer, then some of your email will be refused by a large portion of recipients. There are databases of known spammers and many companies subscribe to these lists. If your company’s server is on the list – your email won’t get through.

6) Supporting Smart Phones – If you want to do more than just have emails delivered to your user’s Balckberrys (i.e. contact and calendar synching) then you are going to have to install some additional software by the makers of Blackberrys. This software known as a BES Server. Depending on how many users in your organization, you may be able to download the software for free. This is something you’ll have to explore with RIM.

The alternatives to all of the above is to use a hosted service. Because of the overhead involved, many of our clients opt for a hosted solution and its relatively low monthly fee per mailbox. This fee takes care of all of the above issues for them. Some figure that they’re not in the business of running an email server and would rather outsource the function rather than manage it themselves. For some clients, they already have an infrastructure capable of handling one more server and opt to simply invest up front and avoid the recurring charges.

Again, there is no right or wrong answer. It is just a matter of what you prefer and what works for your business.

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Read more by: Jim De Vico

Tags: BES server, Cloud, email server, hosted email, hosted exchange

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 11:36 am and is filed under Small Business Management Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.