Email’s Dying … Again
Beloit College in Wisconsin released its much anticipated “Mindset List” earlier this week. Designed to provide professors with insights into the rapidly changing views of each new generation of students, it mostly serves as a popular (albeit depressing) reminder that we’re all growing old.
This year’s Mindset List for the class of 2014 contained quite a few alarming items, but there’s one in particular that puzzled me.
#2: Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
Email has been dying so gruesomely for so long, it’s starting to look like an over-dramatic death scene from a really bad action movie. Argh! Ugh! Agony! 20 minutes later … Argh! Then, finally … death.
Shocking, right? Snail mail is on its way out. I get that. The death of email, on the other hand, is absurd. Entirely outside the realm of a marketing pitch, email really is the lifeblood of nearly every organization out there. Without it, the world as we know it would come crashing down, especially for us workaholic types. I’m not so sure I can handle the thought of my BlackBerry being nothing more than a glorified paper weight.
In a 2008 blog entry, our CEO Nick Mehta spoke to the ridiculousness of the notion that email is dying. Now, here we are, more than two years later, having the same conversation in different words.
Bottom line: Email has its place, as do social networks. Voicemail isn’t a replacement for email; it’s an alternative that happens to be far more difficult to manage. Social networking isn’t a replacement for email for most people – it’s complementary. While teens and college students may not find email to be useful today, who is to say that they won’t be active email users when they enter the workforce?
P.S. Best of all, Nick’s 2008 conclusions about email ring true to this day.
Redondo Beach Rejects Facebook … for Now
And now a post from our own backyard, the City of Redondo Beach. In a story that appeared yesterday in the Daily Breeze and aired this morning on NPR, the City of Redondo Beach is getting publicity for its recent decision to take down the city’s Facebook page – at least for the time being.
The City Council cited a number of legal considerations behind its decision:
- Potential legal challenges or violations of the Public Records Act over concerns about retaining user comments
- Handling erroneous or vulgar posts that could arguably be protected by First Amendment rights
- Concerns that a Facebook post with comments from three or more council members constitute a violation of the state's open meetings law
- Employee comments that could be deemed offensive in the work environment
City Attorney Mike Webb pointed out that, "Social media is inevitable, but we just think from a legal point of view Facebook has too many complications." He told the council he believes these and other questions will eventually be answered in court decisions. "I would just prefer that the case law not have the City of Redondo Beach in the title." The city will continue to use other social networking sites – such as Twitter, YouTube and the public safety-oriented Nixle – since they don't allow for the same kind of public interface.
Lots of cities, police departments and other public agencies are grappling with the same issues. They want to harness the power and engagement that social media offers while conforming with government statutes and appropriately managing dynamic, free-form communications. As Marina del Rey (a neighboring city) spokeswoman Debbie Talbot said, the comment feature is part of Facebook's appeal for the county department, which wants to hear from people who are not regular public meeting attendees. "We want to identify with people in the community," she said. "We want it to be really a public conversation."
I concur.
Our local (and federal) government should be embracing technology that brings more people into the conversation (not just the regulars who have the time to attend local council meetings). Public agencies can reap the benefits of social media AND stay in compliance through a combination of establishing workable social media policies, moderating discussion threads and leveraging new technologies, like those being developed by LiveOffice.
How much does it REALLY cost to manage an email mailbox?
Well, the answer really depends on whom you ask. If you ask IT folks, you will get a wide range of answers. Osterman Research just concluded their “Messaging Server Market Trends: 2010-2013” survey with 120 IT decision-makers who handle the day-to-day management of their organization’s messaging systems (at companies with 1,100 median email users).
The survey takers were asked “How much do you think it costs your organization per seat, per month to provide messaging capability in your organization and how confident are you in this figure?” They were further instructed to include all of the costs associated with messaging, including hardware and software, deployment costs, the cost of administration and management labor, etc. -- even if they didn’t know, they were asked to provide an estimate. Here’s what they said:
- 50% of respondents were somewhat confident that it costs their organization $10.00 per seat per month (median response) to provide messaging capabilities
- 35% were not confident about the accuracy of this figure
- 14% were confident these figures are accurate
This is in alignment with Forrester’s report, “Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis” (Ted Schadler, January 2009) in which it was reported that many firms simply underestimate email’s full cost. When Forrester asked the firms what they thought their email cost them, they were surprised by “the lowball estimates and lack of consistency.” The IT execs who responded thought that their email cost them anywhere between $2 and $11 per user per month, with the majority guessing $10.
Based on Forrester’s own research of fully loaded costs, the actual costs for managing on-premise email was actually greater than $25 per user per month (including storage, client software, hardware, staffing, archiving and filtering).
So, it’s no wonder that more and more companies are looking to the cloud not only to save costs and their own IT resources, but also to get some much needed clarity on what is being spent. Forrester’s report stated that “cloud-based email is always cheaper for companies with fewer than 15,000 users” offering the added benefits of rapidly deploying/provisioning new users, refocusing IT professionals to more business-centric projects, always running the most current versions (without the upgrade hassles) and shifting the financial burden from upfront capital expense to ongoing operating expense.
For those of us in the cloud email archiving market this is a common (and welcome) refrain. All the more reason to be cloud-ready!
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Ah, how many times have we heard this gem of a phrase in our lifetimes? When you’re a parent, it’s one of those little “wins” you’ve earned, but what about when you’re a major tech company in the midst of a sizeable lawsuit?
According to a motion filed in a North Carolina federal court, Advanced Internet Technologies (AIT) contends that Dell violated a court order and failed to disclose key evidence, including emails. The data was requested as part of the discovery process in an ongoing lawsuit (three years and running) over faulty computers.
While Dell disputes this charge, a digital forensics expert filed an affidavit in the case, suggesting that a handful of emails Dell presented “appeared altered and incomplete.” AIT also produced evidence in which Dell executives discuss how to communicate about the PC issues with various stakeholders. In addition, internal Dell communications suggest that lower-level employees knew these issues were imminent. Other evidence seems to support the claim that employees were asked to downplay the issues with customers.
Given its acquisition of MessageOne (an email archiving provider) in April 2008, it’s surprising that Dell is facing this accusation. After all, isn’t it a good idea to eat your own dog food, so to speak? According to Dell’s own news release on the purchase, “MessageOne’s email archiving services help companies comply with regulations, streamline electronic discovery and maximize storage.”
It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the end (Dell intends to file a response with the court soon). If Dell can’t prove its emails weren’t tampered with and demonstrate a clear email retention policy that the company followed, the computer giant could be in trouble.
CrackBerry DeTox, Chicago Style
The so-called "BlackBerry Overtime" phenomena has been in the news before, but is now the focus of a lawsuit brought by a Chicago police sergeant who is suing the city for overtime back pay. At the heart of the lawsuit is the concept of employees, saddled with BlackBerrys, are working overtime to respond to emails during their off-hours.
It’s not terribly surprising given the semi-affectionate moniker that BlackBerry users and their critics (including attention-starved spouses and family members) have given the device – CrackBerry.
In fact, the term ‘Crackberry‘ is now officially defined by Merriam-Webster as…Nickname for the popular RIM communication device named BlackBerry. The device, which is a phone, PDA, and e-mail appliance has gained outrageous popularity. Users/owners are typically addicted to checking e-mail and swapping short messages on the device. It appears as though they are addicted as a crackhead is to the pipe.
Increasingly, workers of all stripes and at all levels are increasingly expected to check their email after hours, and even on the weekend, whether via their computer, VPN or mobile devices, While many may think this malady only affects salaried workers, it's not the case. Hourly workers, who are eligible for overtime, are also saddled with smartphones and email, and that includes the plaintiff in this particular case, Chicago police Sgt. Jeffrey Allen. His attorney, Paul Geiger, said:
"What we are saying is he's using this mobile device at the behest of the Police Department very routinely and very often off duty and not being compensated for all the time spent on the device doing the city's work."
On the other side of the argument, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley scoffed at the lawsuit calling it "silliness in time of economic crisis.” He added, "This is unbelievable. We're public servants. If I asked for that, I'd be paid millions of dollars. We'd have to take all the BlackBerrys away from public servants." That said, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs wage and overtime provisions for American workers, is quite clear in this. Non-exempt (i.e. non-salaried employees) have to be paid for all the time they work.
A few minutes may be OK, but if an non-salaried employee is checking his BlackBerry for 10 or 15 minutes a day after work hours they can add up under the federal law, and it can mean two years of overtime back pay from the date a lawsuit is filed, or three years if the employer knew what was going on. There have been similar lawsuits in the private sector (most of which settle). Sean Rogers, a former labor relations chief for the IRS and former Washington, D.C., says that there have been just a few lawsuits in the private sector, one of which involved 7,000 employees that ultimately settled for something over $23 million.
So, employers who may not be currently focusing on the potential costs of handing out BlackBerrys, may need to start thinking about the limits and restrictions they put on their use.
Methinks, this will be common storyline over the next decade as employees become increasingly tethered to their mobile devices.
Google and Verizon – Unlikely Bedfellows
Google and Verizon announced this month an agreement that they say will preserve net neutrality, but many industry observers say its the first step towards a tiered-pricing system that will make faster, higher speed Internet service available to users and content providers willing to pay for it.
The announcement would restrict Internet-service providers from selectively slowing content that travels over their wires, but wouldn’t necessaily apply those limits to Web use on mobile devices. Some say that approach would let Verizon and other carriers discriminate against certain traffic, in effect, creating a premium "fast-lane" for well-funded content providers? Not surprisingly, AT&T Inc.’s wireless chief, Ralph de la Vega, said he largely supports the Google-Verizon proposal that would exclude mobile Web services from most FCC oversight.
But, there is always the real danger that federal regulators could actually do more harm than good. Especially, since the Google-Verizon proposal carves out exemptions from neutrality requirements for so-called "unlawful" content, for wireless services, and for very vaguely-defined "additional online services." As many, many, many have already pointed out, these exemptions threaten to completely undermine the stated goal of net neutrality.
Naturally, I have reservations about granting special rules for wireless networks and view Google's new stance on net neutrality kind of weird and a little out of character. Apparently, 300,000 other folks share the same concerns and signed a recent petition imploring Google -- "Don't be Evil."
Even though an agreement from the FCC on net neutrality is unlikely this year, a legislative solution is probable down the road. You can be sure that we'll be monitoring this story as it unfolds.
I Once Had a Delete Button Phobia
I’m new to LiveOffice, and before now, I haven’t had the luxury of an archiving service. Like colleagues before me, I’ve experienced the new warmth of my LiveOffice Personal Archive security blanket. I delete email and text messages like a mad woman now, because I know if I ever needed them down the road, I can get to them pretty easily (I can even access the info via my BlackBerry). Also, since LiveOffice has unlimited storage, I never worry about a full mailbox.
If you don’t yet have the comfort of an archiving service, and are suffering from delete button phobia – one of my idols, Gina Trapani, provides a good place to start embarking on some self therapy. Gina has a great method to tackle a mountain of email. She suggests to first use filters to sort email by sender, delete items like newsletters and social media notifications. Then sort by subject, delete back-and-forth email conversations and forwards. Then sort your email by date, delete anything that is older than a month. Reply to emails that take less than two minutes to answer. If it takes longer than two minutes to answer, give yourself a deadline to answer it.
Gina’s tips are a great way to subside the anxiety caused by a stuffed inbox. Her strategy, coupled with a solid archive has rescued me from my delete button phobia.
The Wave Is Dead; Long Live Email
I’ll admit it. I love bad horror movies. Give me zombies, vampires, fake blood and some popcorn and I’m all set. Whether it’s quality (28 Days Later) or quantity (Halloween 300 is coming out soon I think), I just can’t say no to the Jasons of the world.
One common theme of horror movies is the idea that the bad guy never really dies, no matter how many times he gets run over, shot, stabbed or blown up.
With that long-winded introduction, I kind of feel the same way about email. While it’s not responsible for terrorizing tourists (actually I guess BlackBerries do frighten many vacationing families) or infecting the world with a deadly virus (I take that back too), email has proven to be resilient.
As I’ve pointed out before, every few years, some breathless reporter opines about how some new technology means the end of email. The reporter usually thinks he or she is the first one in the world to point out that they get too much email. And usually [new technology X] is the solution.
The latest faux silver bullet for email was the much-hyped Google Wave.
And while being an amazing engineering feat, Google Wave suffered the same defeat as all other pretenders challenging email. Google announced last week that it is canceling Google Wave, due to the small problem of “user adoption.” It was awesome but not useful. Email may not be awesome, but it’s darn useful.
The truth is that for all its warts (too much email, spam, reply-to-all, bcc, etc.), email’s universality and simplicity mean it’s here to stay. I know I’m biased because I run a cloud-based email archiving company, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Email has withstood the test of IM, SMS, social media and now Wave and is still going strong.
To paraphrase TechCrunch (writing about the iPhone), email is the “email killer killer.”
My money’s on email outliving Freddie Kruger. What do you think?
LiveOffice Reports Record Second Quarter Revenue
Thanks to the trust our clients place in us, we were fortunate to have another record revenue quarter at LiveOffice. In this world of uncertainty and “double dips,” it’s nice to feel like we’re a part of an industry (cloud-based email archiving) that is on the rise.
We’ve been very focused on reaching our new clients through our partners, many of whom integrate our cloud-based archiving service with other cloud-based services that they sell. As a result of some of the product investments we made to make it easy for our partners to provision and support our joint customers on their own, our partners drove more than 60% of our new business in Q2 2010.
And we are lucky to be working with some great companies. We were named partner of the year by Intermedia, the world’s largest Hosted Exchange provider. In addition, over 100 Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) customers (companies using Microsoft for cloud email) implemented our cloud archiving solution. Finally, we continue to have great traction providing archiving for customers using Cisco WebEx Mail, Cisco’s cloud-based email solution.
Archiving is also definitely going mainstream and moving beyond compliance, with our Personal Archive solution (which gives our customers’ users unlimited, searchable mailboxes) growing at an annual rate of 177 percent.
My marketing folks say I have to link to our press release, so here it is 
LiveOffice CEO, Nick Mehta, quoted in Processor Magazine
LiveOffice CEO, Nick Mehta, was recently quoted in the July issue of Processor Magazine. The article, titled “Move Enterprise Email to the Cloud,” discusses items to consider when moving to the cloud. Nick’s advice on creating and choosing a migration plan were woven throughout the article. Below is an excerpt, click here, to read the full article.
“This type of cost is a major consideration, as most IT departments spend at least half their budget on salaries, and up to 70% of IT staff time is spent on maintenance of systems such as email…”
The article also listed key consideration points for moving email to the cloud:
• The first step in moving an enterprise to cloud-based email is determining whether it makes sense for the organization, based on factors such as compliance, data recovery options, customization needs, and cost.
• Begin developing a game plan by first taking a look at how usability and operations will be affected and how support will be delivered; also important is establishing a rationale for the move, as this is what will be communicated to the CFO and CEO.
• Determine the type of migration that might be the best fit for your organization, such as classic migration, quick migration, etc.