It's just a matter of time until CPTH is seen as a telecom play, rather than an internet play. JMHO.
Here's some write-up from CMP Tele.com magazine(http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?TLC19990503S0022)
"You've Got Outsourcing -- Companies Get The Message: The Easiest, Cheapest Way To Provide E-Mail Service Is Not To Do It Themselves
Kate Gerwig
When Sprint Corp. decided to upgrade its business-class e-mail service to one that used open Internet standards to provide advanced messaging features with reduced operating costs, it faced a "build or buy" decision. Buying won. In February, Sprint outsourced its business-class e-mail service to Critical Path Inc. (San Francisco), a two-year-old business e-mail service provider. As far as Sprint customers know, it's Sprint's own IP Mail service, because Critical Path positions itself as the "brand behind the brand" for its service provider and business customers. Sprint not only spares itself from the potential headaches that come from providing e-mail service but also cuts the costs of providing something that, for most service providers, is more loss leader than cash cow.
"We decided to go with somebody who has lots of economies of scale and who could make it look like the Sprint brand," says Carl Hopkins, group manager of product management at Sprint. "Having someone else provide the 24X7 support is another benefit. E-mail is a critical business application now, and customers want to make sure the system is going to be up. Nothing is worse than getting a 'server down' or 'host not found' error when you're looking for a critical business message."
Emerging IP-based messaging standards have made it possible for Critical Path and other service providers to offer outsourced business-class messaging services that are taking on rival proprietary systems like Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange. The advantages? Business customers can upgrade their messaging services without overwhelming their internal information technology (IT) staff with another complex application and growing numbers of users. With the year 2000 looming, many businesses are deciding to ditch their old proprietary e-mail system for a new, Y2K-compliant, IP-based one that can be accessed from any computer using a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer, and to let someone else handle the round-the-clock support. The Gartner Group Inc. (Stamford, Conn.) predicts that by 2001, 65 percent of midsize enterprises will outsource some or all of their companies' mailboxes.
Industry analysts agree that running an e-mail application costs between $14 and $40 a month per user. E-mail outsourcing companies say their services cost $3.50 to $8 a month per user; Critical Path says its customers save an average of 50 percent by outsourcing.
Network Solutions Inc. (NSI, Herndon, Va.) has taken a route similar to Sprint's. For $59.40 a year per mailbox, NSI offers its ".com mail" e-mail service to small businesses that want to use their own company name as the domain name for their e-mail address. Behind the scenes, these customers are served by Critical Path.
Using an outsourced e-mail service appeals to Internet service providers (ISPs), Web hosting companies and Web portals for the same reasons that it appeals to business customers. Many ISPs cobbled together e-mail platforms from free IP-based software in the early days. But a kluged system likely won't scale to the fast-growing number of messages.
"No ISP is going to make money off of e-mail, but they have to provide it," says Steve Murray, an analyst at International Data Corp. (IDC, Framingham, Mass.). "They don't necessarily want to handle it themselves because it's a pain."
Critical Path has quickly attracted notice from such established communications providers as US West Inc. The Bell company announced in March that it will use Critical Path service under a US West brand to make free e-mail service available to its 25 million residential and business phone customers in 14 states.
Other players in the emerging outsourced e-mail niche include the applications service provider (ASP) Interpath Communications Inc. (Research Triangle Park, N.C.). For about $8 per user each month, Interpath offers its business customers outsourced messaging using the Internet Messaging Access Protocol 4 (IMAP-4), which stores messages on the server and lets users access the same messages via shared folders on the mail server. The advent of IMAP-4 is what turned IP-based messaging into a business-grade application.
Interpath and Critical Path let business customers use a Web-based tool to add or delete users and make other changes. Both also use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), giving a business access to a directory of its e-mail users, similar to a proprietary system's directory.
E-mail outsourcing's newest entrant may be MiraPoint Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.), a startup targeting ISPs with fewer than 100,000 subscribers and corporations with up to 5,000 employees. MiraPoint provides an e-mail server located at the customer's site and IP-compliant software that supports IMAP-4 or the Post Office Protocol 3 (POP-3) standard. Customers can manage the service themselves or outsource it to MiraPoint.
Some existing ISPs are also entering the field. Within the next few months, UUNet Technologies Inc. (Fairfax, Va.), MCI WorldCom Inc.'s Internet company, plans to roll out a wholesale messaging service for service providers to resell to their own customers, says Andy Boyer, UUNet product manager of messaging. For now, it offers Fortune 1,000 companies a variety of proprietary POP-3 outsourced e-mail services, such as its WANmail POP-3 service for remote access employees. But in the third quarter of this year, UUNet plans to offer an enterprise-class messaging service using IMAP-4 for employees working at a company's main offices. WANmail pricing starts at $3,500 a month for 1,000 outsourced e-mail boxes, which can include the customer's own domain name.
Analyst David Cooperstein of Forrester Research Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) sees e-mail outsourcing as the first of many applications that public network service providers can host in the transition away from selling only access pipes. Such a move, Cooperstein says, not only increases revenues but also helps service providers evolve from transport companies into communications integrators." |
