Questions for Cloud Based Systems
Monetary gain is one of the best sales promises you can make. Moving your email into the cloud uses cost analysis as it’s main feature/benefit. Promises of lower runningcosts, fewer IT staff and escape from increasing costs like licensing and storage are some reasons business managers look at moving systems on-premise.
However, as in most sales based promises, God is in the details and there are serious business questions. I thought I’d share some of the issues our customers have discovered in moving, or trying to move various parts of their email systems to a cloud provider. From this you may appreciate cloud based services are not as mature as you might expect.
Large Emails
Does your organisation send very larges emails? Even the largest providers like Google limit size globally in their system.
Encryption Requirements
If there is any requirement anywhere in the organisation to use TLS? You will likely lose control over session encryption. A few providers provide ‘opportunistic’ support but can’t run by policy, guarantee it or log it. Is it okay your provider can read all of your email at any time?
Mass Email Delivery
Do you need to delivery bulk email like newsletters to customers or partners? Providers will automatically stop large burst deliveries in an automated way, often at the network layer in the form of rate flow triggers, and have few options for individual exceptions.
Privacy of the Internal Directory
When you allow your cloud partner access to your whole internal directory who exactly are you sharing it with? Do you know what third parties partners the cloud provider has or it will be shared with? Will they notify you when those partners change?
Diagnostics
How much log access do you get to the system? How will you find that single ‘lost’ email, how will you confirm to management the contract was sent before the deadline?
CRM Integration
What other systems do you have that produce business emails? How will you glue your various systems like SAP and Salesforce together in the email routing. What happens if one what was internal becomes external or visa versa.
Internal Email Routing
What about printers, photocopiers and other devices that produce emails. How are they able to route emails in the new system? Do you ever need to manipulate headers because you merged with another company, bought another company or changed your company name?
Data Retention
Does the providers retention policy match yours? What guarantee do you have emails have been fully removed after the retention period and are not on a backup, in a database or retained in metadata somewhere?
Regulatory Problems
Do you have any strict requirement to log, or archive, or encrypt - even part of any email at anytime? Do you have to prove there are no credit cards traveling through the email system?
Legal Discovery
What access will be given to the system if your organization is hit with complex legal discovery orders?
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