SIDEBAR: E-Mail Suite Dilemmas

Many big companies like the simplicity and integration of collaboration suites, though they get some less-than-ideal components

Messaging software has become so critical that it's hard to imagine businesses functioning without it. Online collaboration products have also become vital. The question is, should you buy a messaging/collaboration suite from one vendor or purchase individual products for e-mail and collaboration from several?

There are pros and cons to both strategies, industry analysts and IT managers say. But more organizations seem to be choosing the suite option. For most software implementations, there's typically a 50-50 split between companies that buy best-of-breed applications and those that purchase all-in-one suites. But for messaging and collaboration applications, it's more like 70 percent to 80 percent favouring suites, says Nate Root, an analyst at Forrester Research.

The suite preference can be largely attributed to the market's growth. The biggest players, IBM and Microsoft, now account for about two-thirds of product sales, and customers feel comfortable enough with the vendors and their products to fork over what can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Another big selling point is that everything is already integrated. Individual products might not work well together and often need custom coding for integration. "Some of the most important features today are identity management, corporate directories and security policies," Root says. "It's becoming increasingly important that you get those services from a central platform, where everything is woven for you." Such a platform can help ensure that only authorized users have access to applications such as e-mail and instant messaging.

Minnesota Life Insurance Company had been operating a dual environment of Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange until about four years ago, when the company decided to standardize on Notes for e-mail and collaboration, says Jean Delaney Nelson, vice president and CIO.

But the transition from Exchange wasn't without hardships, she says. Many employees had grown accustomed to using one system or the other, and some Exchange users were hesitant to make the switch, says Nelson. "We couldn't build a consensus [among end users] on which way to go, so we had some resistance," she says.

A Way to Simplify

One of the biggest deciding factors for Minnesota Life was the need to make e-mail records retention easier, a concern related to compliance with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). There are just three major vendors that work well with more than one e-mail system, but a company standardizing on one platform has many more vendor choices. And archiving from two platforms also has the potential to drive up overall costs, says Nelson.

Minnesota Life also needed a standardized messaging system that could improve the quality of communications. Prior to the switch, different divisions used different e-mail systems. "There wasn't always a clean exchange of messages," she says. "Now we're all on the same platform, and we can ensure that messages are going through in an understandable format."

It's now easier to collaborate on business projects by sharing information on databases, Nelson adds. "We use [the software] extensively for projects and collaborative purchases," she says. Before the switch, the insurer couldn't use its e-mail systems to share information in cross-division projects such as product development and product-line acquisitions from other companies.

Minnesota Life has also found the single-platform approach to be more cost-effective. It now relies on just one group for support, rather than a different support staff for each environment. The company, which has 2600 Notes users, is saving about $US1 million a year by standardizing on one e-mail system, Nelson says. Cost reductions stem from support staff savings, decreased downtime and other factors, she says.