On The Hill: Radar Hill Blog

Email is a significant part of your business. Email has evolved from the free service of yester-year into a critical communication medium.

Email used to be very simple.

People checked email:

• On one device, a desktop computer in a home or work place.
• A few times a day.
• On one of only a few email programs.
• Downloaded a few Kilobytes of email a day.
• In plain text.

Back then:

• When people responded to email, there was only one Outbox/Sent item directory to check that an email had been dealt with.
• Email servers operated with free or inexpensive software which had to receive incoming email, hold onto it, and send it to its recipients when requested.
• For our part, support was fairly simple: set up the email account, send configuration instructions, and reset the occasional password.
• Junk email was not a serious issue.

Today, email has become complex.

People are now checking email:

• On multiple devices, sometimes an Android phone, a Windows desktop in the office, a Mac laptop at home, and an iPad on the road.
• All through the day, constantly having email downloaded into whatever device they happen to be on.
• On multiple email programs; each device has its own plethora of software choices, each with their own particular settings - there is no standardization, and indeed no standard.
• Store Gigabytes of email on the mail server so they can access it anywhere, anytime.
• In Rich Text, with bold, italics, formatting, photos, links, and video.

Now:

• There is so much more junk and unsolicited email. Email servers have to work much harder as they scan it for millions of varieties of viruses, junk and social engineering emails like harvesting and phishing schemes. Those sending out malicious emails are investing heavily to ensure their emails get past your filters.
• The servers store email and send copies of messages to multiple devices. Mail servers do get bogged down. A rash of junk mail is received, or a nasty virus, and the mail server works extra hard.
• Because people are responding to email on multiple devices, it can be hard to keep track of what emails have been dealt with.
• People rely so much on email, to reach suppliers, customers, colleagues, and exchange information and files with them.