Critical Path expands e-mail outsourcing options

SAN FRANCISCO - Until now, companies that wanted to outsource their messaging systems have faced an all-ornothing proposition. Critical Path has introduced an alternative that it calls Allsourcing: a combination of in-house and hosted offerings that range from basic e-mail to calendaring, scheduling, fax and directory services.

Allsourcing encompasses three options:

Outsourced messaging, which is hosted services bought on a monthly cost-per-seat basis.

In-house messaging, which is packaged applications that companies can run themselves.

A combination of outsourced and in-house offerings.

The Allsourcing strategy applies to e-mail, e-mail gateway services, groupware hosting, calendaring and scheduling, integrated fax, directory services, security services and wireless access. The company offers access to Post Office Protocol and Internet Message Access Protocol mail over the Web as an outsourced service, as well as hosted Exchange and GroupWise services. Eventually, Critical Path plans to add guaranteed delivery and archiving services.

"E-mail used to be enough, and the IT department used to know how to do it," says Sharon Weinbar, vice president of marketing at Critical Path. Weinbar says many companies want to offload some services, such as support for remote offices, but keep others in-house, such as security. With Allsourcing, companies can mix and match messaging pro-ducts and services but get integrated provisioning and billing, she says.

"This strategy will play pretty well," says Chris Selland, a vice president at The Yankee Group, a market research firm in Boston. "A lot of companies are interested in the idea of outsourcing their e-mail, but they'd like to stick a toe in the water. Until now, they haven't had that option."

Critical Path's Allsourcing strategy is an outgrowth of an acquisition binge that began last spring after the company went public. Critical Path, which expects to generate about $100 million in revenue this year, has acquired eight messaging vendors since May, including ISOCOR and FaxNet (see graphic).

"Over the long term, buyers will want to see integrated offerings," Selland says. "It's one thing for a company to outsource its e-mail, and it's another thing to outsource its whole unified messaging system. Companies are going to want to buy this piece-by-piece but have it all work together."

The Allsourcing strategy is attractive to SolutionBank, a Salt Lake City consulting firm that builds back-end systems for e-commerce Web sites for companies such as Lands' End, Litton Industries and Alcan Aluminum. In two years, SolutionBank has grown from five to 320 employees. By outsourcing its e-mail to Critical Path, the start-up was able to focus its IT resources on such mission-critical applications as financials and sales force automation.

"We knew the e-mail infrastructure was not a capital expense that we wanted to invest in," says Coleman Barney, a senior vice president at SolutionBank. "The whole experience has been a little better than we would have expected."

SolutionBank uses Micro-soft Outlook as its e-mail client, with Exchange as the server software. Employees have instructions for setting themselves up on the system, and then Critical Path handles everything else. Barney says SolutionBank is re-evaluating its messaging strategy and may add some of the new services that Critical Path offers. "Faxing and directory services are a distinct possibility," he says.

Critical Path: www.cp.net