24/09/2012
Cloud Based Email, Best Practices for Before You Move
One of the most common applications to move to the cloud is email. Quite frankly, most small and medium sized businesses choose to let a cloud provider host their email because:
Email services are always up and running
Email can be accessed from anywhere
It is scalable – you can increase or decrease as needed
It is affordable (you only pay for what you use)
It frees up resources (IT staff) for other projects.
Although attractive, cloud based email solutions can’t be something an organization just jumps into without proper planning.
In order to successfully implement a cloud based email solution for your business you need to first ask why. The answer to your question should define what your company stands to gain from a successful cloud solution. Once you know why your email should be in the cloud, it is time to start looking at how to move forward with planning your move.
Best Practices
One of the most practical ways to plan a project is to take a look at what other organizations with similar goals have done in the past and apply those practices that worked for them, avoiding, or modify, the things that failed.
Regardless of your industry, there are a few best practices that can be considered universal and should be a part of any organization’s planning stage.
Find out what your employees need
One of the reasons why organizations move email services to the cloud is because they pay only for what they need. A cloud provider makes money from the services they are able to sell. Knowing exactly what is needed can help you avoid paying additional costs and can also help you purchase the solution you need. Some things to look for:
What are the mailbox size requirements?
What are your archiving requirements?
What type of backup and recovery solution is needed?
Does your email integrate with other business applications?
CRM, finance, project management, web applications and many other software packages that are part of the business workflow process are dependent on email services. Before you work with a cloud provider, make sure everything will integrate seamlessly.
Analyze security requirements
If your business is subject to regulations like HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley, then it is important that any cloud solution you use for email has the capability and expertise on staff to keep your business in compliance. If they are unable to supply this guarantee then you should be looking to another service provider.
Determine what you will migrate
The amount of data in your email and calendar history will have an effect on how long your migration to cloud services takes, and ultimately how much it will cost. While most organizations want to avoid the issues of keeping one foot in your current solution and one foot in the cloud, it may be necessary.
It may be necessary to utilize a hybrid approach for a certain amount of time until your organization can move entirely to the cloud.
Test, test and test again
Before anything is completely moved to the cloud it is important that you test the waters. Having employees show up one day to find that their email services have completely changed is bad enough. Not knowing what complications and challenges they may run into can easily kill your credibility.
By setting up a valid testing environment you can see the effect moving your email services to the cloud will have on workers and your company’s workflow.
Have an exit strategy
No one wants to start a project with the assumption that it will fail but if you have been around IT long enough you should know that not everything goes according to plan. If this is the case with your cloud migration, you have to be ready to pull the plug.
Making the decision to kill a project is hard enough but dealing with the ramifications can be even worse. Understand what contractual obligations you have to your cloud provider in the event that you need to terminate the contract. Not only that, but have a plan in mind for how you will minimize any disruption of service should your cloud solution not work out...........
