Outsourcing Email and IM Applications in Manufacturing

Introduction: Email and IM as Organizational Priorities

For a manufacturing company, one of the most important aspects of organizational success is the effective management of information. This process essentially entails delivering email and instant messaging (IM) applications to internal users. The process is considered effective when the performance of these applications meets user expectations at suitable operating costs. However, a manufacturing company is forced to reexamine its approach to delivering these applications when performance does not meet user expectations while operating costs continue to increase. The evaluation of delivery approaches is further driven by the fact that email and its associated operational costs account for a significant portion of the company's financial performance.

The Role of Email and IM Hosting in Modern Business

In the modern world, and particularly in the manufacturing industry, email and IM hosting plays a crucial role in business operations. This necessity is brought about by the increased use of technology in manufacturing processes and the need to avoid the disruption caused when office email goes down (Pruitt, n.d.). When these applications fail to meet user expectations and operating costs continue to escalate, many business owners face a difficult situation.

This scenario is likely to arise because workers become frustrated when awaiting emailed documents from colleagues and clients. Such disruptions can have significant impacts on a manufacturing company's success by damaging the manufacturing process. The situation also burdens the organization's technical staff, who are constantly questioned about when the system will be restored.

Similarly, instant messaging has become one of the most rapidly growing means of communication in modern business. The growth of IM applications is attributed to the increasing importance of collaboration in business operations through the convergence of several communication technologies (Hsu, 2004). For internal users, IM applications are often integrated with other services such as email to enhance communication within the company. Because they function as enterprise applications, integrating IM with other services requires the use of commercially available enterprise IM solutions (Hsu, 2004).

IM applications play a critical role in enterprise communication because IM protocols are integrated with other technology protocols, making IM an important part of organizational communications. Poor performance of IM applications therefore has critical impacts on organizational processes and effectiveness. Much like poor email performance, failing IM systems in a manufacturing company are likely to cause damaging effects on manufacturing processes.

For an organization whose email and IM applications have failed to meet user expectations despite increasing operating costs, several solutions are worth considering. These include retaining the data center and ownership of the applications in-house, completely outsourcing email and IM compute and application systems to a third party, and contracting a third party to host these applications through a cloud computing infrastructure.

References

Alvarez, B. (2009, October). Outsourcing your mail flow: Will it work for you? The Journal of Communication Distribution, 22(5), 25–26.

Asia Cloud Forum Editors. (2012, July 10). Symantec.cloud tackles corporate IM risks. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from

Hsu, V. (2004). The integration of instant messaging services in enterprise communication. Retrieved from Massachusetts Institute of Technology website:

Morrison, D. (2003). E-learning strategies: How to get implementation and delivery right first time. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Ou, G. (2006, February 20). Busting the myths of email outsourcing. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/busting-the-myths-of-email-outsourcing/162

Posey, B. M. (n.d.). Should you outsource your email? Retrieved December 31, 2012, from http://bd905956a42f6ed96c17-a6046798c661ed27e3d4fdfd1b3c5e5a.r62.cf1.rackcdn.com/whitepapers/security/OutsourceEmail.pdf

Pruitt, S. (n.d.). E-mail hosting: In-house servers vs. third-party providers. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from

Vaihansky, P. (2012, November 28). Do not outsource your software development. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from

Waxer, C. (2008, May 29). Corporate email outsourcing: The perks and pitfalls. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from

"What is outsourcing?" (n.d.). IM Solutions. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from