First, it is important to note that we have always been absolutely aware that this service would not appeal to everyone. That being said the market for outsourced email is huge. Most resellers we presented this to were extremely positive about offering the service. The more they heard, the more positive they responded. Don't forget, many more people need email than domain names.
Next, for us a critical part of the thinking is that the needs of email users have become more complex. Users need anti-virus protection and constantly evolving spam blocking (which stands to change numerous times in the next 12-24 months). Users want today, and will want more often tomorrow, not just webmail, but also SMS and IM bridges. Storage and archiving (which are completely different services to me) will also become increasingly complex.
Users will pay for this increased complexity, but service providers all too often still see email as a cost center (and therefore in terms of how cheaply can I provide it) rather than as a potential source of significant revenue. This shift in mindset will be key.
Remember, a shocking number of people rely for a significant portion of their email needs upon hotmail/yahoo/other free mail provider, all of home are curtailing their offerings.
All in, "running a mail server" will soon no longer suffice. Many of you have or will evolve to more complex services. Many others won't. And I think the really smart ones are those that can, but choose to put the resources into something that can truly differentiate them. Remember, in 1995 Trumpet Winsock dialler scripts and modem init strings were differentiators.
The provisioning of email services has become complex and will only become more so tomorrow. It is interesting that the larger the service provider the more likely they are to outsource email. We have had first-hand experience providing customer service to outsourced email and have found that is like most Internet services in that you can have GREAT customer satisfaction with an outsourced service as long as the underlying service is well-provisioned and like any Internet service horrible when it isn't.
The rest is execution.
Regards
On Monday, February 17, 2003, at 09:34 PM, Jim McAtee wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Discuss List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 5:25 PM Subject: RE: Tucows E-mail ServiceSomeone who does not currently offer e-mail services and does not have the
technical aptitude to offer e-mail services on their own would probably
never consider these things as being requirements. We do.
I'd be curious to know who this product is meant to appeal to. Like SSL
certificates, it's likely not something we'd be interested in, but no doubt
Tucows has done some research into the marketplace and felt it was viable.
Generally speaking, you outsource a service when it's either cheaper than
providing the service yourself, or you don't have the in-house resources to
provide it. The only businesses that I can think of that fit that bill (and who
would be selling email services) are virtual ISP's. Many of them, however,
still run their own radius, dns, and mail servers, even if they outsource their
dialup ports and customer service.
Jim
