Engagement Options

Hosted Messaging Strategy Engagement

The Hosted Messaging Services Workshop is designed to help enterprises navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud-based e-mail services. The workshop will examine current market trends for hosted messaging, the reasons to move (or not) to cloud-based communications, and what organizations need to know to make sound decisions and mitigate risks. Attendees will learn how to assess current enterprise messaging environments, make comparisons of leading hosted e-mail offerings, and to build a business case and strategy for hosted enterprise messaging.

Did you know that:

• Mailbox costs represent only a portion of most messaging system costs?
• Most hosted e-mail providers only quote prices for mailbox services and charge extra for more enterprise-ready services?
• Archiving costs are the second most costly messaging service next to staffing costs and can significantly reduce savings gained in lowered mailbox costs?
• Popular hosted email services typically required dedicated circuits for dedicated hosting services?
• Most hosting vendors do not currently support customized application interfaces with their messaging environment?
• Mobile messaging significantly increases messaging system costs?

So how does an enterprise decide to deploy hosted services? What are the risks of moving into the cloud for messaging and other services? Hosting is not an either or scenario and therefore comes with many grey areas that aren’t sufficiently addressed through popular media and vendor marketing tools. Comparing offerings, whether it’s hosted offerings or on-premise solutions, is difficult at best and depends on the individual needs of the enterprise. Hosting also comes with new risks that customers may not be accustomed to or willing to risk. It’s up to the customer to decide if cloud-based offerings meet the unique needs and risk tolerance levels of the enterprise.

Engagement Description:

The Hosted Messaging Services Strategy Engagement is designed to help organizations answer these questions and be in a better position to address hosted services with the enterprise best interests in mind.

The engagement is broken up into four segments: on-site training, facilitated planning, post-session reporting, and executive presentation.

The training portion of the Hosted Messaging Services Strategy Engagement addresses the needs of both senior management and technologists. It includes a one-day on-site workshop of training modules (see below) designed to help team members understand market trends, benefits and drawbacks of hosted services, and a methodology for approaching the facilitated portion of the project.

Burton Group conducts the facilitated portion of the engagement in a structured format. Using survey tools, a Burton Group consultant captures a snapshot of your organization’s overall strategy, governance, messaging infrastructure including its dependencies, existing technologies, standards, processes, and organizational environment. Burton Group takes the opportunity to invite stakeholders from enterprise architecture, communications, legal, risk and compliance, and business units that depend on e-mail (as appropriate) to discuss and describe their environments. During these interviews the consultant and project team members discuss your organization’s messaging strategy and general state of the industry, with questions and answers on each side.

Throughout the project, the Burton Group consultant will lead brainstorming sessions to explore alternatives and discuss your organization’s hosted messaging strategy. During these sessions, the consultant will also build a high-level action plan to help your organization messaging services team move forward.

Following the Hosted Messaging Services Strategy project, Burton Group delivers a written “Summary of Hosted Messaging Services Strategy and Recommendations” report. The report benchmarks your overall enterprise messaging environment, strategy, and architecture against industry trends, prevailing best practices, and other factors. It also summarizes the issues and actions identified during the on-site training and interviews. Finally, it will provide tools for determining costs, roadmaps, and other metrics that will guide your decision makers through the next steps in taking action on your messaging strategy.

The last phase of the project includes an executive presentation with the project findings and recommended strategy. This portion of the engagement allows corporate management to envision the strategy and experience the thought process behind the recommendations.

Training Modules:

We begin the engagement with a workshop that explores the current state of the hosted e-mail services market and the options customers have when choosing hosted services. Participants will discuss the benefits and risks of hosting including savings, security and compliance, service level agreements, support options, hosting limitations, and business value add. The workshop will highlight what is most important to know about existing enterprise system environments in order to make sound hosting decisions and minimize risks. Finally, attendees will receive guidelines for building a messaging strategy and business case for hosted e-mail. Key take-aways include a methodology for evaluating existing environments, what customers need to know before deciding on hosted services, and how to choose the best strategy for deploying hosted e-mail services.

• Hosted services market
  • You should be feeling the pressure by now
  • Hosting is not new
  • Emerging offerings – why now?
  • Hint: it’s good business for software vendors
  • It’s all about the platform
• Hosting delivery models
  • Data-center centric
  • Web-service centric (SaaS)
  • All, nothing, or combined
  • Pros and cons
• Hosting benefits
  • Cost savings
  • Resource savings
• Hosting risks
  • Security
  • Compliance
  • Costs
  • SLAs
  • Migration
  • Buyer's remorse
  • Flexibility and limitations
• What you need to know before you buy
  • E-mail is not just mailboxes
  • Know your users
  • Know your services
  • Know your environment
  • Know your costs
  • Know your performance and usage metrics
• Consider your options
  • Segment by delivery model
  • Segment by service
  • Segment by user type
• What you can do to minimize risks
  • Evaluate provider contracts
    • Liabilities
    • Support
    • SLAs
    • Change management
  • Communicate risks to management and get their approval
  • Set up policies and procedures
  • Get good at using performance tools
  • Do regular audits of costs, performance, usage, and
  user satisfaction
• Methodology for assessment
  • Establish an enterprise e-mail team
  • Understand the existing environment and requirements
  • Understand technical requirements
  • Build a business case
    • Elements of a good hosting business case
    • Costing models
  • Tell a compelling story
    • Options under consideration
    • What the cost models revealed
    • Roadmap to success

Deliverables:

• On-site training
  • Presentation
• Facilitated planning
  • Report of current environment
• Post-session reporting
  • Report with recommendations on strategy
• Executive presentation
  • Presentation of findings

The duration of this engagement is typically between 3 and 4 weeks.

For more information or to start a consulting engagement, please send an email to consulting@burtongroup.com or contact your Burton Group Account Executive directly.