BusinessWeek on Using Web-based Email for Business

The security and reliability of web-based (a.k.a., SaaS or cloud-based) messaging services has been in the news quite a bit recently with high-profile mail delays reported by users of Google's Postini email security service and the (apparently temporary) loss of data that affected users of the Sidekick mobile device.

Last week, Proofpoint VP of Technology Andres Kohn spoke with Arik Hesseldahl over at BusinessWeek and Arik's resulting article, "Web-based E-mail: Businesses Beware" is out today. The article discusses some of the pros and cons of web-based email services. Andres Kohn and other industry experts note that the free or low-cost consumer oriented email services often don't offer the service level guarantees that businesses should require. As Andres (quoted in the article) notes:   

Reputable hosted e-mail providers will lay out their backup policies, says Andres Kohn, vice-president of technology at Proofpoint, a firm that provides e-mail security and archiving solutions to large companies. "You have the right to ask a vendor what their disaster-recovery policy is and how they ensure they're not going to lose your data."

This isn't to say that the SaaS deployment model for email or email security is necessarily any riskier than on-premises approaches, just that enterprises require much higher levels of scalability, availability and security than is present in consumer-oriented services. And service level agreements (SLAs) must spell out the levels of service that will be delivered and what redress the customer will have in the event that SLAs are missed.

You can read the entire article here:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2009/tc20091018_124447.htm