The Arthritis Foundation is a case in point. Four years ago, “we were spending all of our time keeping the systems running, not bettering the foundation’s goals,” recalls VP of Strategy Management and CIO Marla Davidson. “We realized we could get a lot more depth from our staff by using a managed service provider for those operations,” she says. Outsourcing also reduced the risk of failure: “We had just one e-mail admin, so if that person was on vacation or got sick, we would just hold our breath,” she says. Now, the foundation gets 24/7 coverage it didn’t have before.

“Our costs declined and our service levels improved. Plus we get more disciplined management and better security,” Davidson says, letting the foundation now support some Sarbanes-Oxley rules that it couldn’t afford before. (While not obligated to follow them, executive management saw several as beneficial governance approaches, she says.)

Originally, Davidson outsourced all IT operations to one vendor. But after several years of seeing the systems actually outsourced, it became clear that some, such as e-mail, could easily be handled separately. “We now view Exchange as a commodity service. It’s OK to be separate,” Davidson says. So when the foundation asked for bids to take on the outsourcing as part of its contract renewal two years ago, she separated e-mail into its own RFP to open up more competition.

Making Your Case
The case for outsourcing e-mail has been harder for enterprise IT to make, IDC analyst Levitt notes. “It’s not easy to hand off; it’s as core to IT as you can imagine,” he says, with a lot of resources and expertise already invested. That investment acts as an anchor that keeps the e-mail servers and administration in-house. However, as large enterprises consider consolidation, system upgrades or large outsourcing efforts, it makes sense to consider an e-mail outsourcing strategy at the same time, Levitt says.