Two youth service centers, frustrated with their e-mail services, ask me to help them find new solutions… How does a small nonprofit organization go about making decisions between the current e-mail options?
Our e-mail is slow. Our e-mail sometimes gets lost. Our e-mail is slow. We want a common contact list for the organization. Our e-mail service support is unsupportive. Our e-mail is slow…
What services do you want in your new e-mail service? Access from any computer and from any browser. We want it to be faster. You tell us what we need.
Most any service might be faster than what they each currently use– free e-mail accounts that you get for signing up with a web hosting service, or that your web designer tells you they can throw into their bundle of services.
They are using Cloud Computing! Just like the attorney, who loves his AOL, is using Cloud Computing! (Isn’t it interesting that this new thing called Cloud Computing has actually been part of our internet lives for a while.) They dont have IT staff and they don’t want programmatic staff focusing on keeping the technology running. Programmatic staff need to be focused on the agencies missions. They want Cloud Computing that is faster, is reliable, that is operating system and browser agnostic. What small nonprofits find wonderful about Cloud Computing is not needing to purchase and maintain an in-house server, when one does not have an in-house IT Department.
To not have to worry about refreshing server infrastructure, or waiting for the server repair guy, aah, thats the life! What could be the catch? One has to deal with 1) someone else having control of the system, 2) that the provider could go out of business or discontinue that line of business (both have happened), and 3) privacy of the data, is it protected from the bad people and who will protect it when it is requested by a court.
I don’t think that the issue of control of the system is a big issue for most small nonprofits. They simply want something that works efficiently, does what it is advertised to do, and provides reasonable support when it doesn’t work, as expected by the user.
Issue #2 is a big deal. Companies do have their services interupted, change the services offered, and do go out of business. Just this month, May 14th, Google Apps went down for several hours leaving 14% of its customers without services. And, Tom Spring in a PC World article on May 14, 2009 reports, “online storage services that have announced closings in the past ten months include big names in tech: AOL (Xdrive and AOL Pictures), Hewlett-Packard (Upline), Sony (Image Station), and Yahoo (Briefcase). Plenty of lesser-known online storage firms also have kicked the bucket, including Digital Railroad and Streamload MediaMax, which turned into The Linkup.
However, in-house servers also go down, sometimes castastropically, and without in-house IT staff, one waits for the service company to arrive. The issue of one’s Cloud company going belly up without notice is a daunting nightmarish thought. One better choose companies well, weight the consequences, perhaps, considering redundant options. Or, decide that the potential information lost compared to the cost of redudant systems is of less consequence. If your organization’s life would be in jeopardy, should your Cloud company go out of business, and should there not be a way of having an alternative in place, then you should not be using Cloud Computing for that e-mail service.
The third issue of privacy and ownership of the data is probably well addressed by a number of the Cloud services. However, if you are an attorney defending Gitto prisoners, you may not want that Cloud company deciding whether to appeal, or inform you, so that you may appeal, a court demand for your files. There are certain kinds of data that should be controlled directly by the people who own it. If your organization finds itself in such a situation, then you should not be using Cloud computing for that data.
Given those three reasons for not using Cloud Computing for your e-mail services, most small nonprofits without IT staff will find good reason to not directly host their own e-mail servers.
Nonprofits have choices of off-site e-mail services: hosted Microsoft Exchange Server, hosted Macintosh OS X Server, hosted Zimbra, hosted Kerio, Google Apps for Nonprofits: Gmail, and many others.
- Microsoft Exchange is the standard against which all others are judged, but it isn’t as platform, e-mail client, and browser agnostic, as my clients would like– it doesn’t play well with others.
- Macintosh OS X Mail has not become a standard against which to judge.
- Zimbra is used by among others, Yahoo Mail, but is limited in its collaborative features.
- Kerio is said to be, as good as, Exchange and to play nicely with a variety of platforms, browsers, mobile devices, and e-mail clients.
- Google Apps: Gmail plays nicely with others and is free to 501c3 nonprofits!
Guess what? One of my two youth service organizations decided to have me implement Google Apps for Nonprofits: Gmail. Its much faster than their previous e-mail service, it plays on either Mac or PC, it can be used from any modern browser, it has collaborative features that they will try out, and it is Free. The other organization is waiting to see what I report about the experience of the first group.
What do you think?
- How have you parsed these decisions?
- Would you rank the options differently?
- How have you mitgated against the possible pitfalls of Cloud e-mail services?
End note: The group that decided to try out Google Apps for Nonprofits would probably move to a hosted Kerio solution, like Digital Criterion or Big Mountain Design or Hoosier Mac, should Gmail not meet their needs. Of course, we would need to compare reliability, redundancy, and support between the various hosted Kerio providers, but there are options from which to choose.
As I experience Google Apps for Nonprofits with them, I will keep you posted.
