There is a new standard for business email

There’s a new standard for business email

Is your on-premises server supporting your business—or holding it back?

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Up until recently, business email has been relatively uncomplicated.

A server in your closet

A server in your closet

Basic/free anti-spam and anti-virus

Off-the-shelf anti-spam and anti-virus

Local disk backup, just in case

Local disk backup, just in case

That was then.

Today, we live in an era in which every employee expects 24/7 access to email no matter where they are or what device they’re using—and in which hackers have the ability to cause unprecedented damage to your company with shockingly little effort.

 

How does the old standard of business email fall short?
Let us count the ways.

Everyone is more mobile

Everyone is more mobile.

People expect their mail, calendar and contacts to be synced on every device—in 2017, users have an average of 1.72 devices, either phones or tablets, per person1.

Older on-premises email server software—especially Exchange 2003 and 2007—struggle to make this happen.

Hackers got smarter

Hackers got smarter.

They’ve learned how to sneak malicious emails through basic email protection. 80% of business users failed to spot at least one phishing email in a recent quiz2. And 63% of confirmed data breaches involved leveraging weak, default or stolen passwords3.

In other words: the spam and viruses that are stopped by the old standard’s software are a quaint problem, compared to today’s email-borne threats.

More business is being conducted through email

More business is being conducted through email.

The proliferation of mobile devices has actually made email far more important to business. In 2016, the number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day totaled over 215.3 billion4, and 45% of those emails contain real business value5.

In the old standard, email was a communications tool. Today it is THE communications tool. The old standard simply no longer cuts it.

Exponentially more data is being stored in email

Exponentially more data is being stored in email.

The average Exchange mailbox has grown 66% since 20116 —showing no signs of stopping.

If you’re running an on-premises server, you need to worry about your physical capacity to store all this data. But as any Exchange administrator will tell you, adding new storage is a lot more challenging than just swapping out a new hard drive…

Users now expect around-the-clock support

Users now expect around-the-clock support.

Your employees close their laptops, drive home, and open their laptops again. As far as email is concerned, your business is open 24/7.

With the old standard, few companies could afford overnight or weekend support to help them if the server goes out—much less find qualified IT people to do the job.

Downtime is now far more costly

Downtime is now far more costly.

In the old days, a Thursday evening server outage could wait for the IT person to fix on Friday morning, because nobody needed overnight access. Can you imagine losing 15 hours of email access in today’s business environment?

On an average, the cost of data loss to business was $900,000 in 20167 —and the cost of such outages will only continue to rise.

On-site backup is no longer safe enough

On-site backup is no longer safe enough.

What if there’s a break-in and your backup drive is stolen? What if there’s a fire and your complete email infrastructure is wiped out? What if your backup gets corrupted, and you only find out when your main storage array fails?

These are all real-world scenarios, on average companies lost 2.36TB of data in 20168. With email being as critical as it is, on-site backup doesn’t provide the redundancy you need to assure business continuity.

Courts now ignore unarchived email

Courts now ignore unarchived email.

This might be the scariest data point of all. 81% of US businesses had at least one legal dispute brought against them in 20169 — but these days, most courts only accept email as evidence if it’s kept in a tamper-proof archive.

Unfortunately, that tape backup whirring away in your closet doesn’t usually rise to meet this bar. Which could cost your company big in court.

1. The Radicati Group, Inc. Mobile Statistics Report, 2017-2021

2. Phishing Deceives The Masses: Lessons Learned from a Global Assessment, McAfee 2014

3. Verizon Data Breach Investigations report, 2016

4. The Radicati Group, Inc. Email Statistics report 2016-2020

5. Best Practices for Using Email Archiving to Eliminate PST and Mailbox Quota Headaches, Gartner, Sept. 2012

6. Intermedia Exchange data 2015

7. Global Data Protection Index Global Key Results and Findings, EMC 2015

8. Global Data Protection Index Global Key Results and Findings, EMC 2015

9. 2016 Litigation Trends Annual Survey, Norton Rose Fulbright

These new requirements
demand a

NEW STANDARD

for business email.

It’s clear. While the technology behind email hasn’t changed much in the last decade, the ecosystem and infrastructure required by businesses to leverage email safely and completely has evolved dramatically.

There’s a new standard for business email. And let’s underscore the word “standard”: it means that at a minimum your business needs to have every single one of these elements.

  • 24/7 expert support
  • White glove migration included
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Syncing of email, calendars and contacts on every device
  • Latest versions of Exchange
  • Protection against phishing and other modern email threats
  • Dedicated Private Cloud deployment options
  • Full suite of integrated voice and data apps
  • Tamper-proof email archiving
  • Multiple redundant on-site and off-site backups
  • Option for unlimited storage
  • Financially backed uptime SLA
These new requirements demand a NEW STANDARD for business email.

Learn more about the New Standard
for business email

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Meet the New Standard with Intermedia.

Intermedia is a one-stop shop for 30 cloud business applications including everything you need to meet the New Standard for business email.

  • Exchange Email
    Exchange Email
    • 99.999% uptime
    • Latest version of Exchange 2016 available
    • Unlimited mailbox storage
    • Flexible deployment options for companies 500+ that require a customized cloud
  • Office 365
    Office 365
    • Office™ tools with business grade email, Skype® for Business™, and more
    • Easily collaborate and work virtually anywhere, anytime, across all devices
    • Stay up-to-date with the newest, most innovative features of Office
  • Email Archiving
    Email Archiving
    • 100% capture of every email sent or received
    • Indexes all emails and attachments and stores them in a tamper proof central repository
    • Simple search, filter, tag and recover
    • Unlimited storage and infinite scale
  • 24/7 Support
    24/7 Support
    • J.D. Power Certified Assisted Technical Support program
    • Highly qualified support specialists
    • No lock-in to a single person
    • No outsourcing
  • Migration Support
    Migration Support

    • Complementary white glove onboarding
    • Customized migration plan
    • Free set-up with minimal interruption to business

Consult with an Intermedia expert about the "new standard”:

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The new standart for business email
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Follow @intermedia_net or discuss the new standard for business email using the hashtag #newemailstandard

About Intermedia

Intermedia is the world’s largest independent provider of hosted Exchange. Our Office in the Cloud™ suite of cloud IT services includes Hosted Exchange, Email Security and Email Archiving along with over 25 other essential business tools. Our services are fully integrated, secure and mobile, with management through our central HostPilot™ control panel and backed by our Worry-Free Experience™ that includes a 99.999% uptime guarantee and 24/7 support with typical hold times of less than 60 seconds.

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