Hosted Core Services

I think the next decade will prove to be an interesting time as far as hosted services are concerned. The prices and quality of hosted services are improving for the buyer every couple of months. Microsoft/Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Gmail are all improving their free services and offer some sort of business class hosted solution as well. Of course they have integrated social networking and applications as well. Google is leading the charge to deploy as many features/applications as possible and theirs and Microsoft's offerings are the most elegant. Google's isn't quite as well integrated as Microsoft's but Microsoft lacks the visibility and still feels a little too restrictive by comparison (log in at least once every 90 days or lose it).

Of course one of the most core services is e-mail. This has rapidly become the file server for employees and personal users of mail. So why should someone host their mail (and other services)? Cost is an obvious reason, and accessibility and you don't have to handle the burden of off-site redundancy, etc.

There are a lot of other details and some philosophical/legal questions that need to be considered on any of this as well but there are a couple of different core opinions about it but I think I can predict a reaction and opinion based almost solely on age.

One of the biggest benefits of having your own mail system is that you have instant, live support from internal people, including the ability to restore something you inadvertently deleted. There is also a sense of security that you can go into the server room and physically touch the server(s) that holds you mail. Some people like that sort of thing. Hosting your own mail, and this is a big generalization, tends to be a more popular solution for people who are roughly 35 or older, unless they tend to be more technology aware.

On the other side of the argument, we have people using mail who are now 10 - 35 years old who most probably grew up with a free hosted mail account being their original e-mail. They never had the luxury of having their mail restored and probably tend to be more careful with what they delete. They have a greater awareness and responsibility for their mail management. This group is also of the opinion that mail quotas should be gargantuan. To maintain the types of quotas that the hosted services can is overwhelming for most businesses. My present Gmail quota is 4.8 GB! I'm now uploading all of my old archives into my Gmail account so I can have it in one place. That's cool! Once enough of these people become employees and they bring their expectations to the workplace, it will be too cost-prohibitive to have the quotas to which they're accustomed and they don't expect that level of extra service. It's kind of like the concierge guy/lady in the bathroom that used to be prevalent everywhere and now only remains in stuffy or old-school hotels and restaurants. Frankly, those guys make me uncomfortable.

There will always be a desire or requirement for some companies to keep their mail hosted on-site, but much of this will be driven by the employees and the changing landscape.

We're seeing this as some colleges and universities are beginning to host official student mail. I looked at it quite seriously for the University of Nevada, Reno about a year and a half ago and found that both Gmail and Hotmail had pretty compelling systems for switching. Microsoft's solution would have caused some resistance mostly from the anti-MS faculty on campus but offered pretty good integration with the Active Directory environment but had few options for students to configure their own mail (forwarding, POP/IMAP access, etc.). Gmail didn't have the native AD integration but it did have more options for mail handling and it did have APIs for hooking into the existing directory services.

So, with all that being said, there is potential for small to mid-sized companies using hosted mail soon with existing options (and several are, but not a enough to be very noticeable). Much of the acceptance of a hosted mail offering is generational though. The sub 35 year old workers are more independent in terms of mail and their expectations are different than the average 35+ worker. As we get more of the Generation Y and later workers in the companies and the offerings become more robust, we'll see the shift.