A thorough analysis of the internal costs of providing messaging services to a midsized or large organization shows that outsourcing the entire messaging system to a third party can provide a lower cost of ownership over the system lifetime. First, messaging outsourcing providers have not been able to convince enterprises that internal management is more expensive.
Truth is, downtime is a significant cost of ownership for a messaging system.
Perhaps more important than cost considerations is the fact that outsourced messaging means relinquishing control of a message store to a third party. We ve found that security concerns about a message store are the most serious objection to outsourced messaging, followed closely by concerns about the loss of control over the management of the messaging system. This is because IT labor may get less scarce than it has been over the past couple of years, so organizations will lose one motivation to outsource, and there won t be as much pressure to make more efficient use of internal staff. However, we will be fielding a survey to get a better idea of the attitudes towards outsourced messaging services and will publish the results shortly in an upcoming newsletter. Michael D. Osterman is the principal of Osterman Research , a market research firm that helps organizations understand the markets for messaging, directory and related products and services.