I ran across an interesting article in Network World written by Michael Osterman the other day titled, “Would you like to stop using e-mail?” My initial reaction was, “of course not, why would I want to do that!?” The subtitle of the article went on to state, “One-quarter of messaging-related professionals would possibly or definitely consider getting rid of email if they could.” The reasons sited were the costs, risks and administration time required to manage email. Hmmm…
There are costs, risks and administration time required to manage almost any mission critical application, and email is certainly no exception. The article went on to state, “It’s not surprising that so many decision-makers would like to get rid of email.” I’m surprised. I believe very few, if any, of our customers would say that. Why? Well, for one, I believe that all of them understand that they could not do business without email – so what is the point of even thinking about not having it? Secondly, and most importantly, it’s probably because we help our customers look at email from a holistic and architectural viewpoint, as all mission-critical applications should be. If email is viewed tactically and as a necessary evil, then it’s no wonder why so many organizations are having difficulty managing it.
Maybe some of these messaging professionals responded to the survey sited in the article in that way because their email application and security vendor(s) take an entirely different approach to addressing the challenges than we do. They sell boxes to try to address the issues – a very tactical and cost-prohibitive approach to addressing such an important enterprise application. In fact, the reason why so many enterprises turn to Sendmail is because we do just the opposite. Our messaging architects take our customers through a complete email architecture assessment and act as their “trusted advisor” before we talk about selling them anything. It isn’t until then that we begin to make recommendations on how they can streamline and modernize their email infrastructure while gaining a compelling ROI (see Glen Vondrick’s blog post, ‘Spending Money to Save Money,’ for more on that topic.)
I love Osterman’s analogy at the conclusion of his article: “To be fair, asking if decision-makers want to get rid of e-mail is a bit like asking if they would like to get rid of their 401k…” The way I look at it is if they had the right financial advisor and looked at their portfolio in a more holistic way, then they would be in a lot less trouble – just as our customers have avoided the pitfalls of managing their email infrastructure by relying on Sendmail’s architects to be their trusted advisors.