A Competitive Mailing Platform - White Paper

Rediff.com

1 “A Competitive Mailing Platform” – Rediff.com White Paper

A Competitive Mailing Platform – Rediff.com White Paper

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Contents

On Premise Vs Hosted Mailing Solution 3

Hybrid Solution 5

How Rediff meets the Challenges 6

Competitive Comparison 9

Summary 11

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On Premise Vs Hosted Mailing Solution For many organizations, IT itself is not their core

competency let alone managing email services. Business

emails are their critical support mechanism. Most of the

times, organizations who has setup in house email

services underestimate emails full cost to their

organization. The cost of in house email is not just limited

to licensing and hardware cost. It includes costs of staff,

maintenance, storage, archiving, mobile email, etc.

Maintenance and support

To calculate actual cost of software licenses, one should

also include annual maintenance and support cost along

with installation charges. Software up gradation costs are

also significant and should be included in software

licensing costs.

Storage and archiving

With mailboxes size increase and accumulation of

attachments over the period, the cost of storage soar

rapidly. Along with this archiving, business continuity, e-

Discovery, and regulatory compliance add significant cost

to email.

Staffing cost

For In house solution, you need have dedicated team to

manage the operations. Each of these tasks needs a skilled

resource who understands the mailing solution from end

to end.

Hardware cost

The hardware cost is not limited no of servers or routers.

The biggest contributor to hardware cost is the power and

data center cost.

Redundancy

In house email solutions are not scalable easily. To avoid

last minute hiccups administrators, configure all these

services in excess thus introducing redundancy in system.

Also for business continuity, IT administrator has to make

sure that they have redundant infrastructure in case

anything breaks up. If we consider all these costs for

managing in house email services, the actual cost of email

per user increases at least four times the cost of one email

license.

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Benefits of hosted mailing solution In hosted mailing solution, customer need not to worry

about the email infrastructure and its maintenance.

Scalability

You don‟t have to waste time in procuring licenses,

provisioning mailbox space or setting up email accounts.

Also hosted mailing solution can cope up with sudden

increase in inbound or outbound email traffic easily.

Always up to date

The hackers and spammers are continuously inventing new

techniques to invade into your mailing system. If your

mailing system is not upgraded with latest security patch

or upgrade, it can cause heavy damages to your business

critical information. Rediffmail Pro email solution is always

up to date with all the security updates and you don‟t have

to worry about security of your email data

IT resource management

When Rediffmail Pro is managing your email solution, you

can allocate valuable IT professionals to more business-

centric projects. The opportunity cost of running email on-

premise is that your staff must spend time on email

support, rather than revenue generating projects is quite

significant.

Secure email service

The reason for which most of the organizations opt for in

house email solution is that they are worried about their

data security and control over hosted email service. With

Rediffmail Pro, the data is transmitted using secure

channel and moreover it is stored at a secured premise.

Also you can control unauthorized email data transmission

by defining user level restrictions and policies for their

email usage.

Access to open technology

In house mailing solutions binds you to proprietary

technology and protocols. The in house mailing solution

integration with different devices or software comes with

huge licensing cost. Hosted email services bring in value

by integrating with free clients and applications. With open

technologies, you could use any Android based phone/ d/

tab, iPhone, iPad, to get seamless access to email, calendar

and address book, while on the move.

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Hybrid solution Hybrid solution combines best of both on-premise as well

as cloud mailing solution. You can host few users on on-

premise using „Microsoft Exchange‟ or „lotus notes‟ and

rest all of the users on Rediffmail Pro platform.

Organizations can optimize the cost and at the same time

do not compromise on data security policies by opting

hybrid email solution. Typically in an organization, top

executives would require email solution with advanced

features like access to emails, contacts and calendar on

mobile devices while other users would just need a basic

email facility.

Pay for what you use

In on-premise email solution, many feature and services

are bundled together. Most of users require only the basic

email functionality. By configuring on-promise for all the

users on domain, IT manager ends up in paying for the

features or services which are not used by most of the

users. In such cases, hybrid solution is best alternative. IT

manager can configure only power users who require

advanced functionality on on-premise solution while most

of the users can be hosted on cloud mailing solution.

Ancillary services

On-premises systems could be used for the primary email

system, but a cloud-based email continuity/disaster

recovery system could be used to maintain availability

during outages of the primary system. Also cloud email

service can used for spam/virus filtering and archiving

before the mails are forwarded to on premise mailing

servers.

Phased migration

The organizations which have on-premise email solution

would have already invested in email infrastructure, and its

criticality makes them shy away from rocking the boat.

Most organizations has „play safe‟ approach where “if it

ain‟t broke, don‟t fix it” attitude takes precedence

especially when a disruption to email can carry heavy

consequences. In such cases, hybrid solution offers a great

value where IT administrator can migrate to cloud mailing

solution in a phased approach. This helps to ensure that

the disruptions are minimal and the transition is smooth.

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How Rediff Meets the Challenges

The Rediffmail Pro email platform was built by Rediff.com

from scratch thus we have complete know-how of our

entire email architecture. We have been part of many

government and technical committees which defines

policies regarding email transmission in India.

Robust infrastructure

The Rediff hosted Email Service is built with the goal of

providing reliable email and messaging services all hosted

within a secure datacenter. Our robust and redundant

network infrastructure helps us to deliver mails with

minimum latency and ensure up time up to 99.9%.

SPAM control

Messaging anti abuse working group (MAAWG), Rediff.com

is a representative of MAAWG from India and has

contributed to address issues relating to SPAM originating

from India. Our multi-layered SPAM filtering mechanisms

helps us to filter out up to 99.9% of SPAM messages and

known viruses trying to reach user‟s inbox.

Enterprise grade admin control

You can take complete control of email transactions on

your domain. The features such as bulk user management,

password security policies, mailing to list with controls,

branding, global address book sync on outlook 2007 and

2010, etc.

Mail on mobile

With Rediffmail Pro mobile application which works on

most phones, you are able to read your mails, view

attachments etc. Your actions on the mobile, like replying

to a mail, will also be reflected on your PC. Moreover using

this application you can get new mail notification on your

mobile.

Hassle free Data migration

If you are worried about your existing data, we have data

migration tools to migrate all your existing data to

RediffmailPro platform without any data loss.

Customer support

Our team of expert customer support executives email and

phone based support to our customers. Predefined SLAs

with escalation matrix helps the speedy resolution of

customer queries.

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Rediff hybrid solution Rediff offers different approaches for implementing hybrid

solution. The key for implementing hybrid solution is to

segment the user based on their email usage and feature

requirements. Once such segments are identified,

administrator can then host users in particular segment

on-premise and rest on cloud email solution.

On premise solution as a gateway In this approach the MX record of domain (mycompany.in)

points to on-premise mailing servers. Thus all the mails

are first received at on-premise mailing servers. On

premise mailing servers then relay all the mails intended

for users on RediffmailPro platform to specific url. The

detailed steps are explained below:

IT manager configures 100 users on on-premise mailing

solution ([email protected], [email protected] )

IT manager configures rest 900 users on Rediffmail Pro

platform on primary domain itself.

([email protected], [email protected] )

The MX of primary domain points to on-premise mailing

servers.

On-premise mailing solution relays mails intended for 900

users on Rediffmail Pro platform to

„mail.rediffmailpro.com‟

For outgoing mails, 100 users on on-premise mailing

solution use their own SMTP setting and 900 users on

Rediffmail Pro platform use SMTP settings of Rediffmail Pro

mailing solution.

mailto:[email protected]


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Rediffmail Pro as a gateway When the MX records of primary domain are pointed to

on-premise servers, all the mails received on the domain

are first delivered to on-premise mailing servers. Thus

organization needs to scale up on-premise servers

appropriately to serve additional load. Also up-to-date

anti-virus and anti-spam solutions should be deployed on

on-premise servers to stop unwanted mails. In Rediffmail

Pro as a gateway approach, the MX of primary domain

(mycompany.in) points to Rediffmail Pro servers. Thus all

the mails are first received at Rediffmail Pro servers.

Rediffmail Pro servers then relay the mails which are

intended for users on on-premise solution. The detailed

steps to configure hybrid setup using Rediffmail Pro

servers as gateway are explained below

IT manager configures 100 users on on-premise mailing

solution ([email protected], [email protected])

IT manager configures rest 900 users on Rediffmail Pro

platform on primary domain itself

([email protected], [email protected])

The MX of primary domain points to Rediffmail Pro servers

i.e. mail.rediffmailpro.com.

Rediffmail Pro servers relays mails intended for 100 users

on on-premise mailing solution to server IP specified by IT

manager.

For outgoing mails, 100 users on on-premise mailing

solution use their own SMTP setting and 900 users on

Rediffmail Pro platform use SMTP settings of Rediffmail Pro

mailing solution.


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Competitive Comparison

Comparison Features Rediffmail Pro Google Apps Office 365

Core Competency Email is the Legacy

Business

One of the

businesses

One of the

businesses

Data Security IDC Based in

Mumbai , India

Data is hosted

outside India

Data is hosted

outside India

Customer Approach Direct from

Rediff.com and

through Reseller

Through reseller

only

Through Reseller

only

Tech Support Personalised,

telephonic, online

support,

documentation.

Email, FAQ,

Support through

Reseller

Email, FAQ,

Support through

Reseller

Customize Mailbox Quota Available Not Available Not Available

Reliability Upto 99.9% uptime Upto 99.9% Upto 99.9%

Bandwidth & data transfer Unlimited Unlimited

Unlimited

Virus protection Available-Integrated Available Available

Spam protection Available Available Available

FTP Access Available 5gb per user Available ( Extra )

Admin interface Available Available Available

User Management Available Available Available

Domain management Available Not available Not Available

Custom Branding Available on Google page Not Available

Bulk Tasks (Add / Delete /

Edit Bulk User )

Available Available

Available

MIS Available Available Available

Newsletter ( One Click

Send mail to everyone in

domain )

Available Not Available

Not Available

Mail Alias Available Available Available

Catch All Mails Available Available Available

Group Mail id's Available Available Available

Mail Archival, Mail Backup Available Integrated Available Extra Available (Extra)

Global Address Book Available Available

Available

Attachment Management Available Available Available

POP,IMAP,SMTP,HTTP Available Available Available

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Access/Mail migration Available

Attachment size 25MB 25MB 25MB

Email routing controls for

dual delivery

Available - Mail

forwarding

Available

Available

Policy management &

message recovery

Available Available Available

Mobile access via App “Rediffmail NG” Not Available Not Available

Calendar Sync Available Available Available

Digital Signature Available Not Available Not Available

Maintenance & upgrades Included Standard No info available No info available

Block unwanted e-mails

sent by users.

Available Not Available

Not Available

Enterprise Mail INR Pricing Model Dollar Pricing

Model

Dollar Pricing

Model

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Summary

The key for any organization is to migrate to the cloud

where it makes sense to do so – such as for security or

archiving applications – and to support cloud-based

solutions with on-premises infrastructure, such as critical

email-enabled applications or those that must remain in-

house for compliance reasons. Deciding on the balance

between on-premises solutions and cloud-based

alternatives will hinge on the three goals of a) mitigating

risk, b) driving down the cost of email and c) maintaining

24x7 reliability.

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A Competitive Mailing Platform - White Paper

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