Whitepaper: Why Email Must Operate 24x7 and How to Make This Happen

Email is absolutely critical to organisations of all sizes: it is the primary way that individuals communicate, it is the primary way that users send files to others inside and outside their organisation, and a growing proportion of organisations use email as the backbone for transaction processing, order processing, customer relationship management, and other mission critical processes. Email use continues to grow and will remain the dominant form of corporate communication for many years to come.

However, email systems are not completely reliable. Systems go down as a result of natural disasters, as well as less dramatic problems like a local power outage, a leaky sprinkler pipe above a server or even a planned server outage. Most often, disruptions can occur from something as simple as server patches that are not fully tested or shifting loads that unexpectedly crash a server. The bottom line, however, is that email systems rarely operate 100% of the time despite the need for them to do so.

The results of this downtime can be devastating and can include lost revenue, lost employee productivity, loss of reputation and lost opportunities of which an organisation might not even be aware. Unplanned email outages or even routine maintenance can cause huge disruption not only to your business, but also to your customers and partners. Our reliance on email has grown and the full impact of an email system going down is often not realized until it is too late. In this new Osterman Research paper, sponsored by Symantec.cloud, you’ll learn about some of the issues organisations face as a result of email outages and the importance of implementing an email continuity service.