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What is an In-sourced/On-premise Emailing Solution?
An Insourced emailing solution comprises of email servers deployed at a data center which is in premise. The mail directly land on this setup, and delivered locally. Users access their mailboxes from these servers.
What is an Outsourced/Cloud based Emailing Solution?
An Outsourced email solution comprises of an MSP (Mail Service Provider)/DC who hosts the entire email infrastructure and users access this over the Internet. Typically such systems provide the IT team with an administration console to perform provisioning and administration tasks.
Note: This comparison is not a document claiming one is better than the other, rather it’s a document highlighting the salient attributes of each, which will help you decide which model is best suited for your organization’s needs. Mithi offers both types of solutions (Connect Xf Email Service and Connect Xf Email Server).
Need help choosing the right Email Solution for your enterprise? Our presentation here will be able to simplify the task for you.
Factors for Comparisons
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| 1. Usage, Operability, Monitoring and Maintenance |
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| Factors |
In-Premise Emailing Solution
(In-sourced Email) |
Cloud Email solution (Outsourced Email) |
| Pricing |
Upfront Investment
You would need to invest in hardware, software subscriptions, data center facilities in house, which include high quality redundant Internet links, redundant power supply, back up etc.
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Pay as you go
No capital expense except for the Internet connection to access the mail from the MSP site. Hosted email service providers offer a predictable monthly or yearly pricing on a flat per user basis. This makes it easier on your cash flow.
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| Total Cost of Ownership |
Capital Expense
You would need to budget for hardware and software purchases. In addition you would need an in house IT team (either internal or outsourced to an FM company) who will monitor, manage and maintain the setup. |
Operational Expense
No upfront investments in hardware or software purchases. Additionally, the MSP’s team will perform the maintenance and ensure uptime of the setup. This substantially reduces cost overheads of a customer.
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| Bandwidth Usage & Productivity |
Optimal use of Internet pipe
Since a majority of the messages/mails are for communication within the enterprise/office, hosting the solution in house on a LAN that has a much larger bandwidth than the internet connection ensures a more optimal use of the provisioned internet bandwidth and provides better response. |
Overuse of Internet pipe
All local mail will also travel over the Internet pipe from within your own network cloud.
Accessing email messages can require heavy downloads that can choke the bandwidth. Since the size of the mail is variable unlike database records, the bandwidth provisioning is difficult and actually grows with the use.
The bandwidth requirement is therefore unpredictable and result in frequent choking if all the mail traffic has to travel through the internet connection. |
| Archiving |
Cost effective Archival
Most organizations have already invested in central storage infrastructures like SAN/NAS. It is an incremental cost to provision storage and a server for archiving if the setup is in house. |
Expensive Archival on cloud
Most hosted MSP’s are not designed for having too much storage available on the cloud. Typically the setup is a landing point for the mail with the desktop clients really having the bulk of the older mail (as they download using POP). Hence Archiving on the cloud is typically an expensive option.
You may consider a hybrid where you may use a hosted email service for live mail while maintaining an archive server in premise. The MSP should however support such an architecture (If you opt for Mithi’s solutions, this can be done) |
| Maintenance |
Upgrades, Backup, Monitoring
Your inhouse IT team has to ensure backups of the servers, and mail data. It also has to regularly monitor the servers, network and data center parameters 24/7 to ensure uptime. |
Outsource this
The MSP would take care of this from the perspective of disaster recovery and as for the mail data, it would as per their SLA. |
| Deep Dive troubleshooting or analysis |
In your own control
Since the setup is in your control, your IT team can use tools to mine data from the various logs on the servers for deeper analysis of an issue, mail trace or any kind of troubleshooting. |
Restricted to MIS reports
You would be restricted to the MIS reports which are sent by the software since you won’t really have access to the logs and the server backend. For a deeper analysis, you may need to log a call on the MSP’s helpdesk. |
| Carrier Grade Infrastructure |
Cost to maintain this
Ensuring uptime in all the below mentioned parameters would be a task of the internal IT team and the mail solution provider who would suggest an architecture to mitigate the risks posed by a failure in any of the components.
1. Hardware
2. Networking
3. Datacenter facilities, power, cooling etc.
4. Maintenance staff
5. Internet links
6. OS or Application crash
7. Site failure
In other words Sometimes this is not practical for small enterprises. |
Distributed costs over multi-tenant environments
The MSP would normally ensure uptime in all the parameters listed except for the last mile connectivity from the customer’s office to the Internet cloud.
The MSP offer high availability via redundancy in the components and are typically hosted at tier 4 data centers which offer 99.99% network uptime.
The uptime guarantee can actually be simply purchased from an MSP via an SLA.
Impact of last mile Internet link failure could mean total stoppage of mail access by end users. |
| Software upgrades |
Do it yourself
Your in house IT staff must plan and execute on the upgrades and ensure minimum disruption. |
Transparent & ongoing
The MSP ensures that the system is always up to date with the latest updates, upgrades and technology. |
| Customer support |
Buck stops with you
Your in house IT team has to ensure uptime of the setup and face end user queries and trouble tickets. A lot depends on the email continuity plan if deployed. |
SLA
MSP is bound to provide you with a certain level of committed service and uptime. |
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| 2. Ease of Integration |
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| Factors |
In-Premise Emailing Solution
(In-sourced Email) |
Cloud Email solution (Outsourced Email) |
| Speed of deployment |
Days to weeks
Due to dependency on hardware and other site components, typical deployments take around 5 days to 2 weeks (excluding migration of data). |
Single day typically
It’s a ready setup and the domains and users only need to be provisioned. Typical delivery times are a single day assuming there is no migration of users, configurations or data to the new system. |
| Flexibility |
High on Flexibility
Flexibility is gained in terms of the solutions, in integrating with internal applications, integrating with other collaboration applications. This is critical since the innovative use of IT infrastructure drives the competitive advantage of firms today and will be so in the future. The Email system can be adapted more easily to match the workflows in the enterprise. |
Rigid due to shared environments
Since typically hosted setups are shared, flexibility is limited to provisioning i.e. increase or decrease in number of users. The flexibility of the SaaS/Hosted solutions is severely restricted in terms of the design of collaboration solutions for a specific enterprise need. Loss of flexibility in setting policies and adapting the system to match the workflow in the enterprise. |
| Integration with Business applications |
Easily possible
Web service interface (API) available to integrate with other enterprise applications like ERP to provide integrations like automatically sending reminders, pay slips and other such reports without human intervention. Associated applications like gathering data via forms from the users can be integrated into the Web mail system. This would improve and streamline the collection of market intelligence and reports. |
Rigid
SaaS is ideal for functions that are repetitive and not overly complex. Examples are human resource, customer relations management, document sharing and so on. More complex applications, where each customer requires specialized and complex extensions are less well suited for SaaS, and more suitable for on-premise software. |
| Suitability |
Medium to Large enterprises
Since the solution is a hybrid of services delivered over the web and in-house software deployment, it can adapt to a wide range of requirements for different sized enterprises. |
Small to medium enterprises
Suitable for a Start-up where the growth in number of users is unpredictable and in SMBs where the number of users are relatively small
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| 3. Security and Scalability |
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| Factors |
In-Premise Emailing Solution
(In-sourced Email) |
Cloud Email solution (Outsourced Email) |
| Privacy and Security |
More Privacy
Data security is greater in the in house model. Email Policy, Access Control, and Application of internal security provision. This option provides you the required privacy, complete security and full control over the mailboxes and mail data (which can later be used for analysis and critical decision making). Features like monitoring, automated scheduled back-up to remote servers and tapes, password policies, etc prevent unauthorized access to the data of your users. |
Rely on NDA and SLA
Customers have to rely on the security framework provided by the vendor, which may or may not be verifiable as being adequate. The SaaS vendor can only offer limited flexibility in implementing policies, mail flow restrictions etc. Typically, policies which are applicable to the vendor's large base of customers will only be offered. While SaaS vendors (MSPs) will sign SLAs ensuring privacy of data, you would need to take a call on this based on the sensitivity of your data. |
| Scalability |
Investments done
Scaling the setup may need additional investments if the architecture needs a change (especially when making a jump in usage requirements). It may also need deeper involvement of the IT team to complete this project with minimum disruption. Difficult to downsize the infrastructure. |
Scale up or Scale down easily
The MSPs should take care of this. You may need to simply specify the requirements and give them the time to deliver on that.
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