Managed Mail

Since the introudction of Customs' CMR system, the critical nature of communications within the industry has increased to the point that losing email and internet access has a significant impact on the operations of your business. With that in mind, it's worth considering:

  • What would you do if your email server failed?
  • What would you do if your Internet connection was down for more than a day?

In response to requests from the industry, Commerce Plus has developed Managed Mail to isolate your business critical communications from the impact of network outages. Hosted on Commerce Plus' highly reliable network platform, Managed Mail ensures that you always have access to Customs, 1-Stop and other critical stake holders in the supply chain. Managed Mail consists of two key elements:

  • Dedicated email service for your mission critical applications such as Australian Customs ICS and 1-Stop.
  • Access to Broad Band Wireless Internet service in the event of prolonged network outages

Impact of failure

The impact of a failure affecting your crticial communications infrastructure is dependant on your network architectture, but can be split into two categories:

  • Mail hosted with your ISP, or other third-party email provider
  • Locally hosted mail on your own mail server

ISP hosted email

Many small businesses choose to outsource their email hosting to their ISP, as it offers low costs and minimal IT infrastructure to support and maintain. Hosting your email with your ISP opens your business to the following risks:

  • No service levels for availability and performance
  • Delays in email due to the ISP handling excessive spam
  • ISP’s typically do not view mail as a priority service and delivery times of 1 hour or more are considered acceptable.
  • Business critical email is not prioritized ahead of other less important email.

Locally hosted mail

This scenario is typical of the medium to large businesses where the benefits of fast internal mail and access to collaboration tools outweigh the support and maintenance costs. Hosting your own email comes with the following risks:

  • Loss of internet access means you lose all access to email including EDI
  • Business critical email is combined with general email
  • Difficult to redirect email at short notice due to propagation delays of the DNS system
  • IT systems managed by remote or overseas offices which don't understand the critical nature of CMR communication

Managed Mail

Managed Mail offers a reliable alternative for hosting your business critical email. Built on top of our highly-available Commerce Plus network, managed mail provides dedicated email access to Customs and other stake-holders in the supply chain, and has been specifically developed to provide high levels of service and availability. The Managed Mail platform provides the following benefits:

  • Hosted on a platform designed specifically for Customs and other EDI messaging
  • Full disaster recovery with seamless failover in the event of hardware or network failure
  • Focused application reduces the impact of spam and viruses on the service
  • High performance, robust environment capable of delivering messages in seconds
  • Available from anywhere an internet connction is present

Using Managed Mail for your business critical communications solves the following problems:

  • Delays or failures with your ISPs mail system
  • Internet connection failure, as your messages can be sent or received from any location
  • Local failure of hardware or software in your mail system
  • Always available during hardware or network migrations, or during business relocations

Wireless Routers

Whilst Managed Mail directly reduces the impact associated to failures in your email system, Commerce Plus can also negate the impact of lost internet access. We have strategically located wireless 3G routers around Australia for fast dispatch to your business in the event of a prolonged loss of internet access. This will ensure your systems can continue to communicate with Customs and that your customers aren't adversely impacted by events which are out of your control.

Configuration is simple, and Commerce Plus staff will be on hand to assist migrating your email traffic over to the temporary service.

For more information on how Managed Mail can benefit your business, please contact us.

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