Merely outsourcing of your IT functions to Applications Management Services providers may only further increase cost as we have observed with some of our customers.

According to a survey conducted by Lieberman Software among 500 IT professionals, more than three-quarters of IT professionals who work in organizations that use outsourcing say their providers have “made up” work in order to rake in extra cash.

What’s more, the savings many organizations hoped to achieve through outsourcing are not nearly as substantial as they initially projected. Approximately 62% of survey respondents reported that they paid more than they anticipated on their outsourcing agreements, with 27% reporting that they had spent “significantly more” than they planned. Only 11% reported that they paid less than they expected.

These figures also went up drastically for organizations with over 1,000 employees. Approximately 82% of professionals of these organizations reported that their outsourcing deals cost them more than expected.

To help you bring down your cost of monitoring and managing Connect Xf deployed within your organization, we recommend the following:

1. Enroll your in-house IT infrastructure management team for a free training module that is designed to help you set-up, configure, maintain, troubleshoot and upgrade your Connect Xf Server.
2. If you plan to outsource the management of your Connect Xf set-up, consider engaging Mithi certified service providers.
3. Get your existing Facility Management Services providers to enroll for a free training at Mithi.
4. Ask us for an audit of your email infrastructure and take up the recommendations at the earliest to maintain your system at peak performance (thereby greatly reducing the load on your IT management team). Write a mail from your corporate ID to support@mithi.com. Our team will revert to you.
5. Use our online forum to post your queries on the software and get answers from our inhouse experts.
6. Follow us on the blogs, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, Twitter, etc for the latest news and updates.

Don’t have a Connect Xf Email Server yet in your Enterprise? Experience it first-hand by signing up for a 90-Day Free Trial OR by Test Driving the Baya Webmail Client.

By choosing a Hosted email service, small and medium businesses can achieve a reasonable ROI and not have to concern themselves with activities such as system maintenance and upgrades.

The Benefits Of Hosted Delivery Go Beyond Cost: Cloud-based email services can be cheaper than running your email on-premise. But shifting email to a cloud-based provider also has the following additional benefits:

1. Rapidly provision new users:A cloud-based email provider can help you provision a new subsidiary or perhaps for your extended enterprise like agents, partners in hours or days, instead of weeks or months. For example, we recently hosted close to 6000 mailboxes across 30 domains of a group of companies within a matter of days.
2. Allocate valuable IT professionals to more business-centric projects: Firstly, it is hard for enterprises today to attract and retain quality IT staff especially in an non IT enterprise. So organizations put their IT staff to work on multiple IT projects. By running email on-premise, your IT staff must spend time on email support, may be at the cost of work on other revenue-generating IT projects.
3. Always run the latest software and configurations without upgrade hassles: As any IT professional knows, keeping client and server software upgraded and safe can be quite a task. For a hosted mail service, this task is taken up by the service provider who keeps it up to date with the latest version/ upgrade running the latest security patches so that the system is safe from any spam/virus attack at all times.
4. Shift the financial burden from upfront capital expense to ongoing operating expense: For businesses the biggest benefit of Cloud-based Email is that you no longer carry the debt liability of hardware and software assets on the balance sheet. The financing benefit of ‘pay as you go’ instead of a big upfront investment will appeal to anyone concerned with budget and certainly to the CFO particularly in these capital-constrained times.
5. Higher availability: With email hosted on the cloud, it is easy for you to configure multiple devices for accessing your mail anytime and from anywhere. While a more secure, redundant and high availability system ensures near zero down-times.
6. Collaborate better with additional features: Depending upon your budget constraints, you can very easily subscribe to additional features as required, adding collaboration features like sharing document, calendars, tasks, events, etc. to enhance your collaboration environment.

What parameters do you look for while selecting an Email solution? Did you come across any other benefit after you chose Hosted Email solution? Do share them in the comments below.

Learn how Mithi’s Email Service on Cloud can provide you the above benefits. Sign-Up here for a FREE 90-Day Email Trial.

The Collaboration Retreat 2011 offered a first-of-its-kind interactive platform for sharing CIO and CFO perspectives on Collaboration Infrastructure Strategies. About 20 CXOs and over 80 delegates from diverse organisations participated in the conference. Check out the event synopsis and photos, videos and other stuff here.

This report captures the opinions of IT decision makers in organizations across industries regarding the feasibility and future of OSS and Collaboration IT Infrastructure.

Small and medium scale companies dominated the event with 65% participants belonging to them. Large scale and Mid-market enterprises had almost an equal share of participants – 17% and 18% respectively. Respondents belonged to diverse industry spectrum: BFSI (38%), IT (18%), Manufacturing (14%), Services (11%), Education (7%), Education (7%), Telecom (4%), Healthcare (4%).

Here’s a brief:

With the tough economic scenario, and increasing pressure to curtail costs, organisations are considering Open Source based Collaboration Technologies. Organizations will give preference to such collaboration technologies that offer great flexibility in dynamically changing environments while bringing down costs at the same time.

With the Cloud landscape becoming more reliable and robust at flexible pricing models, Cloud based Services will become more preferred outsourcing option across enterprises.

Mobile technology is evolving at a tremendous pace and they continue to offer better collaboration features at lesser rates. With more options being made available to consumers, organizations are looking to expand over-the-air access to the collaboration applications beyond Blackberry and iPhone devices.

Interested to know how Mithi’s Open Source based Business Email Server can benefit you? Sign-up for 90-Day Email Trial today to find out how.

Have you noticed a similar trend? Or have a different viewpoint? Do share them in the comments below.

Typically this is used in a support/helpdesk environment, where any of the support staff can attend to the incoming mail (requests for help). Additionally it provides complete visibility on all requests to all the team members.

When customers approach us for migrating from such proprietary environments to Connect Xf Email Server or setting up a Hybrid Email solution between Connect Xf and MS Exchange or Lotus Notes, typically this is one of the requirements. This feature is like a workaround/substitute to a full fledged helpdesk software and is a poor substitute at that. Just like you cant really do ERP over Email or do chat over Email (although technically you would be able to)

We felt that this is not what an email system was meant to be and instead we should encourage customers to use a proper ticketing system which is connected to email as a carrier.

Mithi uses the popular open source OTRS tool (Open Ticket Request System) which is connected to Mithi’s email backbone on Connect Xf. OTRS works on the concept of queues, each being mapped to an email id e.g. support@acmecorp.com. Here’s a brief explanation of its working:

1. When a customer sends a mail to support@acmecorp.com, OTRS picks up this mail and converts it into a NEW ticket in the system with a unique ticket number.
2. This is now visible in the dashboard of the support staff manning that queue.
3. Once any of them replies to that, they automatically become the owner and the reply goes as an email to the customer with the ticket number in the subject.
4. The ticket is put on ‘ONHOLD’, and a response is awaited from customer.
5. When the customer replies to the email (keeping the ticket number in the subject intact), OTRS merges customer’s reply in the same ticket trail and shows the ticket as OPEN in the dashboard to all the support staff.

This is a simple explanation of the basic working of OTRS. There is lots more you can explore as you go.

This system is simple, provides visibility of all tickets to all the support staff members, allows internal notes, provides the complete conversation thread in a single view, reports, etc.

We recommend using specialized open software components and tools for the specialized/focused functions like this and simply ensure that it integrates with your email system (Connect Xf is an open system which connects over open standards and protocols comfortably)

1. Support for the latest OS (CentOS 6 and RHEL 6) and OSS components (Spamassassin, Apache, Tomcat, DRBD, etc) for higher performance, reliability and security.
2. Support for DRBD 8 to provide a smoother & more reliable Disaster recovery setup.
3. Over 25 MIS reports for easier management of Activity, Mail traffic and Server Resource.
4. An Upgraded CalDAV compliant calendar server, to share calendar events with users, groups using Baya Webmail Client, Thunderbird, iPhone etc
5. Easier management of the Archive store does away with the day to day manual intervention and provides an easier search and locate specific mail sent/received by users.
6. Easier Administration via a web based application manager console makes it easy to deploy and manage Mail Policy, ensure security and use of Class of service to define properties for groups at a single point.
7. A newer version of Baya Webmail client that is easier to use.
8. Richer Address Book via an improved integration with LDAP for desktop clients like MS Outlook, Thunderbird etc.
9. An improved Thunderbird Connector to allow the users to set server properties from the Thunderbird interface itself (without having to login to the webmail client)

Recommendations:

1. If you are already on the Connect Xf 3.6, you may want to consider enabling some of the above mentioned features on your site.
2. If you are on an older version of Connect Xf, you may want to consider upgrading to the newer version to take advantage of some of the above mentioned features.
3. If you are on Mithi Connect Server XD on Fedora, RHEL3 or RHEL4, you may want to consider shifting to Connect Xf on CentOS 6 or RHEL 6, which will give you higher performance, higher reliability and increased security besides enabling the above mentioned features.

If you are not using our Business Email Server yet, you can sign-up for 90-Day Free Email Trial Or Test Drive Baya Webmail Client.

1. Control over data
2. Security
3. Adherence to regulatory and compliance needs
4. Proper customization and integration with other systems

Private Cloud, which is a more economical and flexible Cloud computing model available, tackle these concerns well.

Since the Private Cloud is within the company firewall, internal IT owns and controls it.

EMC Corporation and Zinnov Management Consulting in a study on Private Cloud landscape in India estimated that the total Cloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach a market value of $4.5 billion by 2015. Of this, Private Cloud adoption will dominate and account for $3.5 billion in revenues, growing at over 60%.

Their study also estimates that Private Cloud deployments could result in potential savings of up to 50% on IT investments as compared to a legacy IT model. The reduction in cost is also due to its lower cost of management and monitoring.

Our own experience agrees with this finding – A good percentage of our customers who are on Public Cloud currently, are either migrating their Email setup to Private Cloud or are planning to do so in the coming year.

Lower Costs and the Strong Administrative features provided by Connect Xf such as Policies, Class of Service, Reports, Role based administration necessary to make it easy to manage a large user base (5000 +) with a Centralized Architecture are helping accelerate this migration.

Here’s a quick glance at some of these features:

• Mail Policies: Mail policies are used to control mail flow to and from the users/ groups and domains. These make the system more secure as they guard against misuse.
• Class of service: Class of service is a way of managing large set of users by grouping similar types of users as Class of users.
• Reports: MIS Reports such as Activity reports, Mail traffic reports, Server statistics reports at all levels for users, groups and alias enabling better server management and security improving overall server performance, leading to higher ROI.
• Role based Administration: This is required for delegating roles and responsibilities of managing Email Admin System for large setups with multiple domains.

Conclusion: Private clouds in combination with Open Standards and Open Source based solutions offer compelling cost and performance benefits for large enterprises.

What has changed is the nature of the in-person sales meeting. Given today’s premium on efficiency, both parties want to keep meetings focused and productive rather than linger over a long lunch. Today’s cloud-based technology and mobile devices are making these meetings more productive than ever by automating meeting preparation activities and the delivery of sales information to the customer in a compelling manner. The fact that sales people can still meet face-to-face but at the same time make the meeting an efficient one with quick turnaround gives companies a distinct efficiency advantage.

The Problem: According to Yankee Group, sales reps spend 74% of their time on non-revenue‐generating activities. So where does their time go?

• Sales prep (16%): Sales reps typically go into the office to prepare before meetings. If they travel a lot, it is easy for them to lose touch with customers’ current issues and needs.
• Administrative tasks (26%): Most sales reps prefer to leave their computers behind, saving up their call reporting and other administrative work for the end of the day or week. This strategy hinders management visibility into sales activity. It also delays responses to customer requests, which in turn lengthens sales cycles.
• Travel and waiting (32%): Sales reps travel to and from customer sites, and back and forth to their offices. They wait for meetings, wait in airports, sit on trains and airplanes, and sit in traffic.
• Selling (26%): Outside sales people typically spend 26% of their time face‐to‐face with customers.

Solution: The idea is to make a few more hours productive (out of their 74% of their time on non revenue‐generating activities) especially the ones that are not in their control – when they are out on calls. This can be done by using technology that is affordable and relevant to their needs.

By equipping the sales person with a smart phone (capable of accessing email messages) and an email account, sales people can receive notifications and business‐critical information in their inbox on mobile device. This functionality enables them to quickly execute tasks and make informed, timely decisions regardless of where they are physically located.

Benefits:

• Recording MOM (minutes of meeting and other information) in your inbox, then transferring it to your ERP or Sales management software can improve reporting accuracy and reduce time spent on administrative tasks.
• Executives can submit and managers can process budget approvals, sanctions, special pricing offers, travel and leave requests from their mobile device, enabling them to handle these tasks while on the go.
• Increasing sales productivity by providing sales people with critical information when they need it to make a sale.
• Increasing the visibility of sales activity to management, with more current and accurate sales reporting.
• Increasing customer satisfaction by providing a more responsive sales service, reducing the contract cycle time, providing rapid “on the spot” resolution of customer issues, and turning account management calls into sales opportunities.
• Reducing sales administrative time so that field sale people have more time to spend with customers.
• Providing a work environment with tools that new generations of workers know and expect to use in their work.
• Improving the quality of sales data used in forecasting and business planning.

Cost: The cost involved could be as follows:

• Cost of providing an Android phone to your Sales Rep / Relationship Managers
• A data plan (costing about Rs 500 per month.)
• Providing email access using Open source based Email solution like Mithi Connect Xf Email Server - costing as little as Rs. 500 per box

Conclusion: Email on your mobile gives you advantages that start in the field and carry through to downstream business processes. An increase of 1-2 hours everyday of staff productivity will result in a very high payback on a relatively very small investment.

Interested? SIGN UP for a 90-Day Free Email Trial to experience benefits of Mithi’s Open Source Business Email Server.

1. Cost: If you’re looking at reducing the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for your email and collaboration infrastructure and have considered Mithi Connect Xf as the mail server, then choosing a desktop client like Thunderbird has a clear advantage as it is absolutely free! It helps you further reduce the cost of ownership.

A single user Outlook license could cost as much as $109.95 as a standalone pack, or it can be purchased as a part of Microsoft Office for about $499 for the 2007 Edition on Windows.

2. Features/Flexibility: Perhaps the biggest advantage of using Mozilla (Thunderbird + Lightning) with Mithi Connect Xf server is the tight integration that it offers for Calendar using CalDAV and Shared address books (Corporate directories, addresses from other domains etc) to sync data.

It adds calendar and task management capabilities to Thunderbird and allows you to manage your daily schedule all within Thunderbird.

Outlook on the other hand uses a proprietary protocols like MAPI which allows data sync only with MAPI compliant servers like MS Exchange, which means Outlook calendars cannot be shared across users or synced with the serve if you’re using OSS based servers like Mithi’s Connect Xf .

Also, the fact that Thunderbird supports extensions like Lightning, Adblock Plus, Contacts Sidebar, LookOut, Image Zoom, Foxy Tunes et al from third parties makes its feature repertoire virtually unlimited.

3. Speed: In all of our experience with these programs and the vast majority of users amongst our customers, we have found Thunderbird to be more responsive. Several independent surveys too confirm this.

4. Security: Because Outlook has a a larger install base in the business environment, it is more frequently targeted by hackers. And is therefore perhaps more vulnerable. Besides, Thunderbird is open-source, which usually gives it a big advantage in the development and release of security patches at a faster rate.

5. IMAP Support: If you are running an Exchange server, using Outlook as the client is the best option. However using Outlook’s support for IMAP to connect to Connect Xf mail server is not all together trouble free. Thunderbird on the other had has some settings to make it sync entirely with Mithi Connect Xf  over standard protocols such as POP & IMAP. This will generally make your experience with Thunderbird as a mail client for Connect Xf, much better.

6. Customization: Thunderbird is also better in case you enjoy customizing your Email client. There is a vast collection of themes and extensions available. These will also cover up for most features that are not integrated into Thunderbird by default.

Conclusion: Thunderbird combines better with Connect Xf offering you better capability, security and TCO.

This article details the prerequisites, advantages and disadvantages of each setup to help you decide on which architecture would suit your organization the best. The possible options are:

1. Consolidated setups in which all mail servers are hosted at the corporate data center at one location.
2. A distributed architecture in which every branch has its own mail server that talks to the central mail server at the corporate data center.
3. A mixed architecture in which branch servers are installed only in those locations which do not have sufficient connectivity to the data center or the mailing requirements at this branch are special.

CENTRALIZED MAIL SERVER
Pre-requisites for when to go for a consolidated setup

The following conditions are conducive to having a centralized mail server setup.

1. Presence of a corporate data center with 24/7 administrations.
2. Availability of adequate computing power and storage in the data center.
3. High speed Internet connection with suitable redundancy.
4. Sufficient bandwidth on the WAN connections to the remote branches. The bandwidth on each WAN link required will depend on all the applications running on the same and on the mail traffic and mail protocols used.
5. A large number of branches geographically distributed with the average number of users at each branch not enough to warrant the setting up of a remote mail server.
6. Lack of administrative resources with sufficient knowledge to manage remote mail servers.

Advantages

1. The server topology is simplified.
2. The Mithi Connect Server servers can be administered centrally and thus reduce administrative costs.
3. Mail Servers and other hardware devices are used optimally.
4. A centralized data center can increase scalability and availability.
5. With a fewer target servers; there are fewer security issues.
6. Easier to manage mail archiving and other compliance related issues as all mail pass through the central servers.
7. Easier to keep the mailing system up-to-date as it is easier to upgrade and patch central servers.

Limitations

1. As the end users will access their mailboxes on the central server via the network, the user experience will directly depend on the speed and availability of a connection between the branch and the data center.
2. The network traffic between branches and the data center will increase. The traffic will be more when users access their mailboxes using the web mail client or a desktop email client. In case of access using a desktop email client, the traffic load will be more in case the client makes an IMAP connection to the server, as opposed to a POP connection.
3. When moving from a distributed setup to a consolidated setup, the network traffic will increase substantially due the traffic generated by moving mail boxes from the branch servers to the central servers
4. WAN bandwidth is utilized to transfer mail from one user to another even in the same branch.

DISTRIBUTED MAIL SERVER
Pre-requisites for when to go for a distributed setup

The following conditions are conducive to having a distributed mail server setup.

1. A small number of branches with enough number of mail users at each branch to warrant a local mail server.
2. Adequate administrative resources at the branches.
3. Insufficient bandwidth capacity between the data center and branches.
4. Messaging requirements at a particular branch are high.

Advantages

1. De-centralized administration.
2. Low bandwidth usage on the corporate WAN.
3. Faster mail deliveries for messages between users in the same branch.

Limitations

1. Higher administrative resources required at the branches.
2. More security issues as the number of servers is more.
3. Slower updates and upgrades to the mailing system.
4. Backup and mail archiving to be done at individual branches.

While, the biggest benefit of cloud-based email services is that it is cheaper than running your email on-premise. Security, full control over data and process along with customization and integration with other systems are the main reasons why enterprise choose on-premise email setup.  The hybrid approach, however, sees a vendor giving customers the best of both worlds by allowing them to maximize the benefits of both a hosted delivery model and those of the on-premise model.

The key however to finding a balance between both delivery models is to adapt according to the business’s needs. And while security, availability and flexibility have a role to play in arriving at the correct mix, the most important role is played by the mix of users in an organisation.

In any organization small, medium or large there exists three distinct type of Users:

• Management Team (mobile users requiring 24×7 access to email)
• Back office staff (desktop users with mostly office use)
• Field staff (mobile users with intermittent use).

The only variable being the number or count of users profile in each category depending on the Type and Size of an organization.

One size does not fit all…simply put a purely hosted or On Premise setup (Proprietary or OSS) based product will either end up in very high costs or in compromising on the performance.

Therefore a Hybrid setup that combines any two approaches offers the best solution that makes business, security and technical sense.