Thin is In: Webmail Empowers the Un-Tethered Worker
Enterprises Reduce IT Budgets, "Desk-less" Employees Stay Connected

The promise of the distributed workforce is being fulfilled. The incentives are well known by now–reduction in facilities and workforce support costs, increased productivity, and greater agility, to name just a few of the benefits. At Agilent Technologies, for example, remote employees cost 60 percent less than their colleagues tethered to corporate desks--significant savings, considering that 70 percent of Agilent’s workforce is virtual.

Fifteen percent of the U.S. workforce is remote or distributed, according to The Work Design Collaborative. This figure is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2012. In their whitepaper, "How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing," James Ware and Charles Grantham of The Work Design Collaborative note that some enterprises have resisted expanding their remote employee population due to the cost of equipping workers with technology. "[But] in our experience these added technology investments are miniscule relative to the real estate and facilities savings," write Ware and Grantham.

Technology companies such as Agilent, Sun Microsystems, and IBM have been the big trendsetters in workforce redesign. The large population of "desk-less" employees at these firms are today’s knowledge workers; they can work from anywhere and stay in touch and productive via email. Some companies in the healthcare, restaurant, retail, insurance and other industries are following suite and extending email to their geographically dispersed workers. And yet the cost of arming every single remote employee with a computer and corporate email can be high, not only in hardware investments but also in monthly messaging licensing fees. Consequently, many companies eschew corporate email, leaving their insurance and real estate agents, retail clerks and warehouse distribution staffs to the public portals, with their legendary security risks.

Hybrid Messaging Networks Save Employers Money

The fact is that companies can actually reduce their IT budgets, provided they are strategic in their efforts. Employees require different messaging features—the highly collaborative employee is a prime candidate for a traditional thick client messaging solution that includes video conferencing and robust calendaring features. A thin-client solution such as Webmail is more than adequate for users whose jobs don’t require such a high level of collaboration—the retail clerk, real estate broker, and field sales professional, for example. Highly collaborative employees command a bigger slice of the IT budget than less collaborative, often remote users. By segmenting their user base accordingly, companies reduce monthly licensing fees and support time.

The messaging network that reflects user segmentation is essentially a thin- and thick-client hybrid of a traditional platform (such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes) that provides email and advanced messaging and project management tools to highly collaborative workers, and a simple Webmail solution for remote workers who require only basic email and calendar functions. A thin-client solution, Webmail resides on a single server and is scalable for up to thousands of users. Log in is via browser, which includes browser-enabled mobile devices. Retail workers, for example, can log into a shared Webmail terminal with their user ID and password, and productively and securely communicate with other employees.

How much can companies save by segmenting their messaging user base? If 40 percent are highly collaborative users and 60 percent are standard users for whom Webmail is a more-than-adequate solution, you can reduce the average monthly cost of each Exchange mailbox by converting the majority of your users to Webmail. A Microsoft Exchange account for 10,000 users costs about $26 per mailbox, or $260,000 a month. And yet only 40 percent of those employees actually need Exchange–the remaining 60 percent are standard email users. By adding Webmail to their network, companies stand to reduce their average cost per Exchange user to as little as $14.75. This amounts to savings of $67,500 a month!

Beyond email, a viable Webmail solution must also be secure and accessible via any web-enabled PC or mobile device. The interface should be customizable, enabling companies to integrate their corporate brand, colors, etc. More collaborative Webmail packages offer drag and drop, shared calendar, contacts and tasks–useful for enterprises whose highly collaborative employees are often also remote.

The trend towards Web-based applications is another excellent reason to consider Webmail. More and more companies are moving their corporate applications to data centers. The reasons for this vary, from the trend towards a more dispersed workforce, to protection of corporate data in the event of a disaster, to regulatory compliance. One thing is certain, the transition from a purely thick-client to a thin-client or at least hybrid infrastructure is well underway.