[PLUG] Fwd: question about email hosting solutions

[Paul Heinlein]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006, Brent Rieck wrote:

> Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> > It is work?
> > 
> > Aside from periodic tweaking of the spam filtering engines, 
> > where's the work?
> 
> sounds like you have a business opportunity for those that don't 
> want to deal with their own mail server, no matter how little work 
> it may be.

Once an e-mail system is up and running (not an easy task, but it's 
essentially a one-time thing), the time-consuming work is two-fold:

  * user and list maintenance: accounts, aliases, and lists
  * customization support: filters, shared folders, etc

That sort of work may be carried out by a systems staff, but it's 
defined and driven by the business customer. Unless that's customer's 
needs are *very* static, my opinion is that it's impossible for a 
viable business to not "want to deal with their own mail server."

You may not think of accounts, aliases, et al. as the real work of 
maintaining a mail infrastructure, but imho it is. It's possible to 
outsource the systems end of the deal, but the day-to-day tasks never 
go away because they're business issues, not technical ones.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com