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General Information
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September 11, 2009
• Vol.31 Issue 23
Page(s) 34 in print issue
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Use The Cloud To Protect Email
Cut Expenses & Headaches While Archiving Messages
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| Key Points
• Many enterprises have substantial investment in email systems and are unwilling or uneasy with outsourcing all of it to an online service provider. For these, a hybrid approach, using the cloud for backup/archiving, redundancy, and disaster recovery makes sense.
• While message archiving is the fundamental and popular purpose of cloud email services, optional capabilities include information management, e-discovery, message filtering, business continuity, and disaster recovery.
• Pricing for cloud services is subscription-based with rates tied to the number of mailboxes, total storage consumed, or both. | Perhaps the most overused, ill-defined, and oft-misunderstood technology term of the past year is cloud computing. In fact, according to Gartner’s seminal model for categorizing new technologies, cloud computing now sits at the apex of the Hype Cycle—the precarious “Peak of Inflated Expectations.” In many respects, the cloud is just the latest buzzword for established online services formerly known as SaaS, on-demand software, or ASPs (application service providers).
Perhaps the most common consumer-based online service is email—no sane individual would dream of running their own mail server when Web-based accounts are free, reliable, and full-featured. Likewise, a burgeoning industry has emerged providing email services to business. Yet many IT managers aren’t ready to take the plunge and completely outsource such a critical application. However, building a highly reliable, scalable email infrastructure that can meet ever-increasing usage is expensive.
“Traditional methods carry heavy facility, hardware, software, and personnel requirements, and the capital and operating expenditures can be significant,” write Forrester Research analysts Stephanie Balaouras and Christopher Voce in a recent report. They note that making a total commitment to the cloud isn’t the only option. “You could solve the entire message continuity and recovery challenge by simply hosting your messaging infrastructure in the cloud, but if you currently have and plan to continue to have a premise-based deployment of your messaging infrastructure, cloud services for message continuity and recovery can address some of the core challenges of doing it yourself—a hybrid solution.” Nick Mehta, CEO of LiveOffice (www.liveoffice.com) believes that, “Using the cloud as a backup or archive is a great way to test out the concept even if you don’t want to move all your email there.”
 Basic Architecture & Topology Of “Hybrid” Approach
In the hybrid architecture, IT still operates an internal, enterprise email system, such as Exchange or Domino, but replicates all email traffic to a service provider. “It’s like having a second copy of the data online,” says Mehta. Should a company’s internal systems fail, the service provider can take over as the primary MTA (message transfer agent), storing and queuing all in- and outbound traffic. Once internal systems are back online, the cloud service’s queued messages are forwarded for redelivery.
Message backup and archiving are the core features most users look for with email cloud services, with some vendors stopping right there. Mehta actually sees four distinct applications for auxiliary, cloud-based email services: data retention, message search or e-discovery, personal message backup, and business continuity. With more companies subject to regulatory requirements or potential litigation necessitating access to past email, automated archiving and discovery have become important requirements for internal email services.
Likewise, most people are email packrats, but the cost of storage systems and management are nontrivial, particularly for SMEs. “Storage may be cheap,” says Paul Banco, CEO of MXSense (mxsense.com), “but you’re always going to need to buy more.” So, many companies just move the storage management problem to a service provider; for example, Mehta sees many customers offloading all but the past 30 to 90 days of mail to a service provider.
Mehta and Banco both say SMEs are a core customer group for cloud email services, with Banco seeing particular interest from businesses facing compliance requirements and the resultant need for significant storage capacity.
Cost Drivers & Trade-Offs
Rates for cloud email services are typically a monthly subscription based on the number of archived mailboxes and/or the total storage footprint. According to Balaouras and Voce, “The cost per mailbox depends on how many services you subscribe to. Do you want simple continuity of service? Data recovery? Archiving? Emergency communication? Each additional service adds to the cost per mailbox. Pricing can range anywhere from $5 to $10 per mailbox and $3.50 to $6 per GB of storage.”
Selection Criteria & Recommendations
When evaluating cloud email providers, the Forrester analysts advise looking beyond mere cost calculations to consider a vendor’s infrastructure resiliency, security technologies, and administrative controls. They add, “Beyond ensuring that your data will be encrypted in flight and at rest, you should also ask your service provider if it has a SAS 70 Type II certification as well as certifications for ISO standards, such as ISO 27001/27002, that spell out specific auditing requirements for hosting and securing customer information.” Aside from standard SLAs, Mehta also encourages customers to ensure they maintain ownership and control over their data—what he terms “a client bill of rights.”
Cloud customers can also save money by not over-specifying service levels and avoiding lumping users into a one-size-fits-all solution. Balaouras and Voce note that the difference between guaranteed 100% availability and living with the occasional short outage could mean thousands of dollars. Likewise, they say “take a hard look at the recovery requirements for different segments of your user population; it’s likely that large groups of users might need continuity of service but don’t necessarily require access to their historical emails—and there could be opportunity to cut down on cost.”
The cloud may be over-hyped, but cloud services are rapidly evolving and are particularly appropriate for mature, standard services such as data backup and email continuity. Aside from the convenience of almost instant deployment and access to advanced capabilities beyond the reach of many SMEs, cloud services can make financial sense by obviating the need for large capital expenditures and additional IT staff. 
by Kurt Marko
Critical Selection Criteria & Considerations
Aside from the service cost and features, there are other functional considerations potential cloud customers must think about:
• Are there different service levels for different users or accounts?
• Is the service designed for disaster recovery/continuity or data protection and archiving?
• Are there services to protect mobile email or other apps?
• How automated is the failover process?
• How do you recover messages sent and received during failure?
• Does the service mesh with other disaster recovery/resiliency technologies and procedures?
• Does the vendor meet local laws and regulations and comply with standards such as SAS 70 v2?
• Does the vendor offer messaging services such as filtering and e-discovery?
SOURCE: “PROTECTING EMAIL WITH THE CLOUD: HOW CLOUD SERVICES CAN PLAY A ROLE IN MESSAGE CONTINUITY AND RECOVERY”; FORRESTER RESEARCH REPORT BY STEPHANIE BALAOURAS AND CHRISTOPHER VOCE WITH SIMON YATES AND ALEX CRUMB; JUNE 2009. |
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