Keep It Simple

When your mail system is based on a standard platform, maintenance is simpler because your IT staff can apply skills it has already learned in managing other IT resources. That’s one reason Jim Bobo, systems administrator and chief programmer at Courtesy Insurance Agency, switched his company’s 100 users from Exchange to Stalker Software’s CommuniGate Pro. "You don’t have to have a degree in Microsoftese to use the thing," says Bobo.

Beyond cost, some companies are finding that fewer features can actually be beneficial to the end users. For instance, ManuLife Financial, a Canadian financial services company with extensive business in Asia, used Lotus Workplace Messaging to deliver Web-based e-mail to 3,600 independent insurance agents in Japan. Because most of those agents are not computer savvy, the company wanted an easy-to-use solution. "A high degree of functionality would be a bad thing because you’ve got novices who have never used a computer before," says Rob Salerno, a partner at MetaLogic Consulting, which installed the Lotus system. "You need something that has an easy-to-use interface and performs well."

Others agree. For many workers who don’t use PCs every day—factory workers, retail employees and the like—simpler is better. "Low maintenance and low total cost of ownership make a lot of sense for those workers who don’t need a lot of high-end features," says Dana Gardner, a senior analyst for The Yankee Group.

A Mature Market

Such employees—about one-third of the corporate workforce, according to estimates by Radicati and Ferris Research—are a tempting market for e-mail vendors. With the rest of the corporate world already sewn up by IBM and Microsoft, vendors are looking for growth where they can get it. Therefore, the recent push toward low-cost mail solutions may be driven more by vendors’ marketing desires than it is by customer needs.

There’s also an underlying technical reason for vendors to push standards-based e-mail. Putting e-mail servers on a common foundation gets vendors in line with the overall industry trend toward open Internet standards. "The business design we have, which is based on industry standards, leverages the industry’s investment, which is why we can get the licensing costs down," says Ambuj Goyal, general manager of IBM’s Lotus Software. In other words: With millions of developers working on Java applications, IBM doesn’t have to devote its own resources to building a robust platform from scratch. IBM’s goal is to have all of its messaging and collaboration products migrate to an open platform over time, says Goyal, while preserving support for current Notes clients.