arstechnica.com — A new report by the research company has taken a look under the hood of both in-house and commercial e-mail services, and put some numbers on the per-user costs associated with a variety of options. The surprise result was not so much that Google's corporate services come out ahead, but rather how large a lead it has on every other option.
Jan 9, 2009 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJan 9, 2009
Yeah, but that savings comes with a price.The university where I work has considered using Google for student e-mail since so many like it and use it anyway. The problem is that the university has legal requirements to ensure delivery of critical e-mail, to be able to trace e-mail and verify that delivery, etc. This just isn't possible with Gmail. Sure, we can look at our mail logs and verify that it got handed off to Google's servers, but they don't provide any sort of ability for us to trace it after that point or verify that it got delivered. We need to be able to trace university e-mail all the way from sender to recipient, but Google is essentially a "black box" that we have no ability to see inside. So due to the legal implications involved in the university requirements vs. what Google actually provides, we simply can not use them as an official mail provider. That's what you get for the cheaper price.
zippoJan 9, 2009
I tried to convince my employer to switch to Gmail, but they went with Bell Aliant's corporate Exchange... and it's been nothing but problematic ever since...
drowningfishJan 10, 2009
Blackberry data plans offer BIS (Blackberry Internet Services). You can use BIS to setup similar push-email capability for a gMail box.
Closed AccountJan 10, 2009
They probably have edu addresses, gmail just hosts the service...
thekitchensinkxJan 10, 2009
I get the occasional spam that slips through. Overall Gmail does a great job. I must get 15 spam emails a day, and maybe one every week or so will get by.
oobuntuJan 10, 2009
free software doesn't have to be run on non resilient crap hardware. your spec should include RAID disks, standby server, and offsite backups.
davinci2k1Jan 10, 2009
Switched my company to Google Apps platform over a year ago... at $50 a user /year - it's a terrific deal. Neatly ties together a whole collaborative tool-set. (and the spam blocking is as good as it gets).
davidmwilliamsJan 11, 2009
Well said.It's ridiculous commenters here are saying that "X" is just a "geek argument" and that "companies only care about Y."Imagine having a staff member leave; all their sensitive company info has gone with them. There's no going through that mailbox later to find out if they really did submit a tender on time, or to find the auditor's report which was e-mailed to them alone.Or, as you say, the many other requirements people will have. Auto responders, BlackBerry devices, resource scheduling, sharing of mailboxes and calendars, out of office, public folders, not to mention the ability to restore a deleted e-mail.You can't compare the two. It's ludicrous.
bradleylandFeb 19, 2009
We have over 40 clients. Our biggest customer has 200 offices nationally with an average of 75 seats per site with large sites at 200+ seats. You're right, I know nothing about this stuff.