Outsourcing Email Management? Companies are Getting the Message

Email is a company’s lifeblood. Everyone from the corner office on down depends
on it and expects 100 percent availability. They schedule meetings, assign tasks,
answer questions, receive product orders, check progress and exchange friendly
greetings – all with the click of a mouse. Communication among customers, employees
and business partners has never been easier…Until something goes wrong.

An employee inadvertently opens the door to a virus that downs the entire system … A
heavy day of email volume overwhelms the allocated storage, impeding performance
of other mission-critical IT functions … Corporate counsel has asked that you
turn over all emails from July of last year to settle a patent dispute, and you’re
not even sure if you have them. All the while several of your staff members are
spending hours trying to solve these problems, while the more strategic and forward-thinking
projects get put on hold … again.

Managing corporate email systems has become a nightmare for companies and an
expense that seemingly knows few bounds. Email systems grow so fast that what
should be one of the most strategic tools at our disposal can quickly become
an out-of-control beast that refuses to be tamed.

In fact, according to the Radicati Group, the number of mailboxes is expected
to increase by 20 percent or more, and volume per user has grown by 53 percent
over last year. No wonder system management is such a daunting task.

There’s more at stake than convenience. Vulnerabilities are exposed as email
volume grows, new viruses attack and CAN-SPAM-like government regulations become
more convoluted. A downed email system interrupts business, slows productivity
and disrupts potentially critical communication. And companies can be held financially
liable for viruses that are inadvertently spread by an employee, or for questionable
or inappropriate content transmitted from their systems.

Who’s managing the Email Store?

Most larger companies still place the responsibility of managing their email
systems on already overburdened and under-budgeted IT departments, expecting
them to expand systems, prevent virus attacks, filter spam and develop archiving
solutions – all with shrinking budgets and dwindling staffs. Most of the smaller
companies don’t even have that luxury; it’s strictly do-it-yourself.

Some companies have never investigated how much maintaining their email systems internally is costing them – in actual dollars, hardware costs, IT resources, personnel time and lost revenues and/or productivity when the system is not available. The costs are high – it seems there’s no end to the complexity involved in maintaining a corporate email system.

Most are increasingly heterogeneous, with end users across an organization using different versions and various email platforms – making management and maintenance time-consuming and more complicated than necessary. IT experts are forced to spend enormous amounts of time maintaining a non-strategic – albeit crucial – function while critical business objectives are set aside to meet the urgent email needs.

Meanwhile, system managers are constantly fending off attacks from new viruses and worms, and trying to beat back the influx of spam on already overloaded email inboxes. According to a study** conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 25 percent of Internet users have had their computer infected by a virus, most likely from an email message. They are coming fast and furious, and most companies are ill-prepared. Spam and virus filters are not very good, catching a lot of false positives and dumping potentially important email.

Free Up Your Personnel

A full 60 percent of the costs involved in maintaining a corporate email system come down to personnel, so it makes sense for midsize companies to consider outsourcing. Concerns that made companies hesitant in the past – worries about the consistency of an external data center, and fears that service providers wouldn’t be able to support a globally hosted infrastructure – are non-issues today.

A study* by The Radicati Group, released in November, finds that corporations of all sizes are increasingly deploying hosted email solutions as opposed to in-house solutions. The analysts estimate that hosted email currently accounts for about 67 percent of all email accounts worldwide. This trend is attributed to complex in-house messaging solutions, spam and virus problems, storage pressures, compliance requirements and other driving factors.

Outsourcing management of a corporate email system is where another company hosts your system and is responsible for complete reliability and security – can be a wise decision for companies of any size that want to streamline their email operations and relieve their internal IT staffs of the burden. With the right email management services partner, outsourcing will save time, money and lost productivity by:

· Freeing up your company’s IT experts to focus on more strategic initiatives, furthering the company’s core business objectives

· Standardizing the email platform across an organization, bringing everything in sync and making the entire system more streamlined and efficient

Ensuring that your company will stay on top of virus and worm protection upgrades and complicated government compliance issues

Oprah's Message to YouTube!

Two Fun Flirty Text Message Games

I'm going to share two techniques that I personally LOVE using when following up with a girl after having exchanged numbers. These are both field tested many times and are a great way to gain a lot interest through something dull, like a text message.

Are your texts doing more harm than good? Try these!

1. The Poem Technique

Message: "Creatively complete this poem, roses are red violets are blue.."

Girls absolutely LOVE this one because it's that dumb, goofy, soap-opera, type message that girls love to respond to. Plus, and a HUGE plus at at that, you are SCREENING her with it. "Creatively" implies that you are judging her on her creativity. SO she is going to (and almost always does) make it funny. I've gotten responses like "this is the most random thing I've ever been asked to do...lol hi!" and "I don't think anyone is as cute as you!" Some will definitely make you laugh. Then just transition into normal chat from there. Keep your texts short and to the point, and set up the meeting.

2. The Arnold Schwarzenegger Quiz Show

This technique is awesome, it really makes you realize how much FUN you can have with text message gaming.

Get around 5 or 6 girls who you haven't had a second meeting with yet, but have gotten their numbers. And then let the games begin!

Message: "I'm about to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity."

Her: "OMG WHAT!?"(or something maybe a little less enthusiastic, but you get the idea)

Message: "You get to party with me tonight, but only if you can answer one really important question"

Now shes very intrigued what that "important question" is, and can only help but agree to the frame where she is hoping to win the chance to party with you, which is just awesome!

Her: "What is it??"

Message: "Name 6 Arnold Schwarzenegger movies"

Her: (If she's SMART) "haha..um predator, terminator 1, 2, 3, running man, twins"

Message: "Nice you win..bonus points for running man hah", (then give an invite for something fun that night)

Her: (If she's NOT SMART) "What haha no way"

Message: "Sorry that's incorrect, thank you for playing"

And then you DON'T hang out with them, at least not tonight.

That's the best part about having 6 or more numbers to do this with. The ones who pass the test are now qualified to you and you know they are the FUN ones. Who wants to hang out with a girl who's too cool to answer a funny text message question like that one anyway?

And now that you've blown her off, even though she knows you're going out, she's going to be looking to get validated by hanging out with you the next time.

Now you're gaining interest with the text message instead of being just the same as other dudes. Have fun with these ones, I know I do.

Francoise Hardy - Message Personnel

Yahoo Email Message Headers - How Do You Find Them?

Few people in the world enjoy receiving unwanted email. Whether it's annoying spam of any variety or something more sinister, sometimes it's only natural to want to know where those unknown emails are coming from. However, if you want to learn more about a strange email address, you might not know where to begin. One place to start is by looking into the email headers of the message in question. Email headers are computer code attached to emails that tell computers where the message is coming from and where it's going. Here's how to implement Yahoo mail to find and use email headers to research unknown emails.

Finding email headers with Yahoo mail is easy. If you're using the New Yahoo Mail, simply view the message you want to open, and look for the words "Compact Header." By clicking on the down facing arrow just to the right of these words, a menu will pop up allowing you to choose "Full Headers." The email headers you are looking will pop up in a new window. If you're using the Yahoo Mail Classic, you can still find email headers, but it requires a few more steps. Choose the "Options" link for the menu bar, and then choose "General Preferences." Find the paragraph entitled "Messages," then locate the "Show Headers" heading and choose "All." Now, go back to your inbox and view the message you're interested in learning about. The full email headers should now be visible.

Finding the email headers is only the first step. Now you have to find out what they mean. Email headers can be tough to decipher because they are meant to be read by computers, not people. If you're trying to figure out email headers, the first thing you should look for is the phrase "Received: from." This phrase occurs every time the message is sent from one computer to another. The first time the phrase was written is actually the last one visible in the headers. Find the "Received: from" closest to the bottom of the headers, and look closely at that line. Next to "Received: from" there's usually a multi-digit number separated with periods. This is the IP address of the computer that originated the message. IP addresses are Internet identification codes that help computers find each other. You can use this IP address to learn more about the computer that sent the message, and possibly the person behind it.