Today, email is a requirement for most companies. It has become funda- mental to business, family, and personal life. Email today works because everybody has agreed to the Internet set of standards, which implies inter- operability and gives economics of externalities [4]. No matter what service or system the organization chooses to use, it will be able to communicate with everybody else. This standardization has created many choices for users because there is no best management structure to provide this service.
Outsource
Self-managed No
Yes
Centralized Outsourced
Distributed Low
MU
High MU Centralized Distributed
Efficient Flexible
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It depends on the organization and what factors are critical to its success. At one end of the spectrum, a company can outsource its email to a large cen- tralized Web-based provider, such as Hotmail or Yahoo! — a very central- ized solution. Many users (such as myself) have Hotmail accounts that are useful and free — a powerful incentive. If Web-based email does not meet an organization’s needs, outsourcing to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) might. On the other hand, sometimes users demand complete control over their email systems, meaning they will self-manage their email service. If email is provided in-house, then the network infrastructure might be cen- tralized with a single email server or distributed with many email servers.
There are many ways to provide this necessary service, and each structure makes sense for some groups of users, depending on the amount of market uncertainty within the group. Each different way to provide email service has its pluses and minuses — the level of control each user has, the ability to experiment, the cost of experimentation, and the ease of management dif- fer drastically from one extreme management structure to the other. With centralized management structure, features such as virus protection and fil- tering email for inappropriate language are easy to manage, but manage- ment becomes more difficult with distributed management structure. The case study in Chapter 8 illustrates that when market uncertainty decreases, the percentage of users satisfied by email systems with more centralized management architecture increases.
The first decision about how to provide email is choosing whether the organization wants to outsource this function. While virtually all organiza- tions need email, for some it’s like a commodity; they need only the most basic services, such as a stable email address. A centralized Web-based email provider, such as Hotmail or Yahoo!, or a large ISP, such as AOL or MediaOne, will meet their needs well. Outsourcing lets a company spend the least time managing email, allowing it to focus on its critical business functions. If you are certain about what you need, and if you are sure the email service provider can meet your current and future email needs because you expect ongoing low market uncertainty, then outsourcing could be a good idea.
Once you decide to outsource email, there are additional choices to make, as illustrated in Figure 4.2, which shows several ways that email might be outsourced. In part (a) both Companies (B) and (C) outsource their email service to a large centralized Web-based email service provider, such as Hotmail or Yahoo!. This is the most centralized way to provide email. With Web-based email, the small business owner needs access only to the Internet, because from anyplace in the world with Internet access and a browser, users can access email. Depending on how much email the
Management Structure of Network-Based Services 55
user wants to store on the centralized server, a service like this might be free or have just a small fee. The local company has no responsibility to manage the mail server or even the database of email messages. The ser- vice provider manages these tasks. The email messages themselves are managed by the email service provider, which means that if the service is down, the user cannot even access old email messages. With this email sys- tem, users have little flexibility. If they are unhappy with the service or demand advanced features not currently implemented, it is unlikely that they will get any satisfaction. In this case, the power of the user is very low (see Porter’s five forces [5]) because it is unlikely that any one user can get large centralized Web-based email service providers to respond to any request for different service. The centralized scheme depicted in (a) is the least trouble to manage for the organization, but it is also the least flexible, because the users have no control over how the service provider manages the service.
In contrast to Web-based email is the outsourcing methodology shown in Figure 4.2(b). With this email system, the organization has outsourced its email service to an ISP such as America Online (AOL), MediaOne, or smaller local ISPs, via the Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Mail Application Protocol (IMAP). When the email system is outsourced to an ISP, the user does not need to manage the email server, but most likely will manage his or her individual email messages. It depends on whether POP or IMAP is used (IMAP is not widely implemented with ISPs). With POP users have only one choice — to manage the messages themselves; with IMAP users decide if they or the service provider will manage the mes- sages. Providing email with this method has a centralized structure, but less so than the Web-based email scenario. There are two main reasons for this. First, ISPs have more of a membership structure. This is true even for large ISPs such as AOL and MediaOne — if you are a member of one, then that is where you get your email. Members of both AOL and MediaOne can get email service from a large centralized Web-based email provider such as Hotmail. Second, ISPs mostly force users to manage their own email messages. The less centralized email scheme in (b) is easy to manage, pro- vides little flexibility, but does allow the user more control over his or her email messages if the user chooses that option.
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Figure 4.2 Outsourced email architecture.
As seen previously, one decision a manager faces is who should manage email messages — the service provider or the user? When the messages are managed by the service provider, the user has no responsibility for mes- sage backup, disk space, and database management. When the user man- ages his or her own messages, then the user has this responsibility. Both schemes work for different sets of users. If you are not sure what you want to do with old email messages (an indication of higher market uncer- tainty), the flexibility of self-management is likely worthwhile.
Different organizations have different needs when managing messages.
A company might depend on fast retrieval of old deleted email messages from backup archives. Depending on an ISP or Web-based email provider to restore email messages just won’t work; the company must have access to the information, and the only way to do this is by local email manage- ment. Some organizations, such as stockbrokers, are required by law to archive old email messages and maintain their own email backups. Maybe a company does not want any records of email, which makes backups by ISPs and Web-based email providers unacceptable. Remember the
Web-email Internet Messages(C)
Messages(B) Messages(A) Company C
Company B
Company A (a)
ISP email Internet
Company B
Messages(B)
Company A
Messages(A)
Company C
Messages(C)
(b)
ISP email
Management Structure of Network-Based Services 57
Microsoft trial and the embarrassing emails that surfaced in court; this is a good argument for not archiving all email, a strategy that can be ensured only with a self-managed email system. When you need control and flexi- bility, running a mail server seems like a good idea.
If email is essential to the success of an organization, then outsourcing email may not be the best answer because such organizations demand con- trol over their email services. This also depends on whether the particular organization has the technical ability to provide a more robust and flexible self-managed email system. Maybe the organization wants to decide when to upgrade new features or wants to be able to monitor the content of email messages or choose the way messages should be archived. Providing your own mail service by running a mail server within the organization gives management the flexibility to do what it wants, when it wants. For these organizations, the hassle of managing a mail server is worth the effort because they are unable to meet user needs any other way.
There are many ways to structure email systems within the organization, some of which offer more flexibility than others. The organization might run a centralized mail server for the entire organization. All email into and out of the company must go through this centralized email server because it is the only server in the organization. This approach is easy for the orga- nization to manage and gives it the most control over how the system is used. On the other extreme, the organization might insist that each employee manage his or her own mail server2. This gives the organization the least control over its email. A more middle-of-the-road scenario might be each department managing its own email server. The centralized server offers the least flexibility because no departments have any control over their email. The most flexible architecture is to have all users running their own mail servers — everybody can do as he or she pleases. The structure with some flexibility has each department manage its own mail server — then each department is free to do what it wants. Different management structures offer different levels of control and flexibility.
Figure 4.3(a) and (b) illustrates two of these management architectures.
The centralized structure in (a) allows the organization to change as a whole. Changes affect all departments, so enhancements are hard to plan 58 Chapter 4
2This extreme is unlikely, but still possible.
and implement. In (b), different departments manage their own email servers. This might be very practical — Accounting and Finance might be best served with LAN-based systems, such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange, while Engineering might want the flexibility of Unix architec- ture with its well-known Pine or Emacs email readers. This distributed structure gives users the flexibility to choose their email servers and read- ers. It allows each department to decide when and how to upgrade its email services, thus allowing more experimentation than the centralized, single-mail-server architecture. In this case, experimentation occurs at the departmental level — a useful structure when there is uncertainty because it allows each department to find what best meets its needs.
In some organizations there is a combination of centralized and distrib- uted structure. Harvard is one example of this because it does manage a centralized email server that is available to central administration. The sep- arate schools, such as Law and Business, also run their own mail servers, as do some individual departments within the schools. Computer Science is one example. Harvard also allows an individual to run a mail server at his or her desktop. My colleague, Scott Bradner, does this — he likes the con- trol and flexibility it gives him. This combination approach is likely to work well in many organizations because it allows flexibility where needed and efficiency when service needs are well defined.
Figure 4.3 Self-provided email architecture.
Email Server
Internet Marketing
Engineering
Accounting Company A (a)
Email Server Marketing
Email Server Engineering
Company A Internet
(b)
Email Server Accounting
Management Structure of Network-Based Services 59
Figure 4.4 illustrates how to apply the framework in Figure 4.1 to the particular example of email. At the top layer, the outsourcing decision is made — if market uncertainty is low enough, then outsourcing is likely to work well and is a good choice. Assuming outsourcing, the next decision is the choice of Web-based or ISP email. This decision determines the next choices. If ISP email is chosen because of its more distributed management style, then there is a protocol choice to make — POP or IMAP. Post Office Protocol (more distributed) requires that the user manage his or her own email messages. Internet Mail Application Protocol (IMAP) is different; it gives users a choice, and it allows both centralized and distributed man- agement of the messages at the user’s discretion. This is the lowest level of the ISP branch of the hierarchical structure. If the self-managed email server is selected by branching right at the top layer because of high mar- ket uncertainty, then the next layer is the architecture decision of how to structure the email service for the organization. Both distributed and cen- tralized architectures are possible — high market uncertainty within the organization would suggest that the right-hand tree limb with its distrib- uted architecture is best. This example illustrates how this framework is a general tool to apply to designing management infrastructure. It helps compare the value of flexibility with distributed management to the busi- ness and technical advantages of the centralized management structure with market uncertainty factored into the decision.
These examples show a variety of ways to provide email to the organi- zation. Each strategy allows a different level of control and ability to exper- iment. Outsourcing implies that the user has no ability to experiment.
Providing your own service implies that you have the ability to experiment to meet uncertain needs, but the level of this ability to experiment depends on how centralized the internal system is. Today, the decision is complex because with voice/data convergence the reality of unified messaging is closer, yet still very uncertain. I for one am not sure how my voice and email should best be integrated. I need to see several ideas, and then I might need to try them out. The point is that I don’t know what I want and that I need to see the choices to decide — this is the definition of market uncertainty. Its link to the value of experimentation is important because it helps us make decisions leading to good management structure for the given organization.
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Figure 4.4 Hierarchical structure of management architecture of email.