What is Managed Mail?

Over the last twenty years and more particularly since Australian Customs rolled out CMR, the critical nature of communications within the industry has increased to the point that business simply stops if you lose your email or internet connection. This has lead to the requirement for a business continuity plan, BCP, being more critical than ever. At the simplest level you should ask yourself questions like;

1. What would you do if your email server failed?
2. What would you do if your Internet connection was down for a week?

In response to a number of requests from industry, Commerce Plus has developed a product called “Managed Mail” that isolates your business critical email and hosts it on Commerce Plus’ highly reliable CommercePlus messaging platform. This ensures that while you may lose your general internet and email, you continue communicating to Customs, 1-Stop and other vital partners.

Managed Mail consists of two key elements;

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

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Impact of Failure

The risks and impact of a failure to either your Internet connection or email very much depends on your network architecture, however it can simply be split into two categories:

1. Internet Service Provider (ISP) hosted mail server, and
2. locally hosted mail, mail server.

ISP Hosted Mail Risks

This design is typical of many small businesses as it offers lower costs and requires minimal IT resources to maintain. However having your mail hosted by your ISP does have a number of risks including;

• 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 is acceptable to an ISP. However these delivery times are not acceptable for mission critical emails including EDI.
• Business critical email is not prioritized ahead of other less important email

Locally Hosted Mail

This solution is typically used by medium and large businesses where the benefits of fast internal email and other functionality such as calendars outweighs the support and maintenance costs. Having your own mail server also has a number of risks including;

• Loss of your Internet connection means you can lose your email, including EDI
• Required to manage your own hardware, SPAM filters and maintenance
• Combination of business critical email and other general email
• Difficult to redirect email to another server in a short period of time due to MX record propagation delays

Commerce Plus’ Managed Mail

Commerce Plus' Managed Mail offers an alternative to locally and ISP hosted mail eliminating the risks associated to your business critical mail.

Commerce Plus' Managed Mail is not a standard hosted mail offer but rather a custom designed POP and SMTP server specially built for high levels of service for EDI messaging to and from Customs. The service differs from standard email in the following ways:

• Disaster Recovery, the environment is completely duplicated, so we are able to switch your email from our production to disaster recovery site in the event of a hardware or network failure.
• Designed specifically for business critical messaging, allowing greater control over performance such as delivery times.
• Focused market reduces impact of SPAM and viruses to the service
• If replacing your own mail server, this service will allow business critical messaging to continue from alternative locations to your office.

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

• Delays for failure with your ISP’s hosted mail
• Internet connection failure, as your business critical mail can be sent or received from anywhere, including the Disaster Recovery wireless routers.
• Local mail server failure, either hardware or software
• Difficulty in redirecting your business critical email to another server in a short period of time due to MX record propagation delays

Wireless Routers*

While Managed Mail will reduce the risks associated to ISP hosted or managing your own mail server it does not help when you lose complete Internet access within your office. Commerce Plus as part of its Managed Mail service will supply a wireless router where Internet connectivity is lost to give you limited Internet browsing capability and ensure your entire critical email remains operational.

Commerce Plus will help your IT staff to configure the wireless router to match your current network design.

Commerce Plus will have access to at least one wireless router per 20 customers per state. A wireless router will be offered on a “first come first served” basis. However it is extremely rare to have extended outages impacting more than one customer.

How does Managed Mail help?

Managed Mail is designed to address two potential failures

• Your email service fails; and/or
• Your Internet access fails

Commerce Plus’ Managed Mail reduces or eliminates the impact of these potential failures as outlined below.

Email Service Failure or Delays

The table below illustrates the impact on your business operations of an email failure or delay when you are a Managed Mail user:

An email failure/delay will not impact on your ability to send/receive EDI messages from Customs/1-Stop because Managed Mail bypasses either the ISP hosted service or locally hosted email. However, other email will be impacted.

Managed Mail is not intended as an alternative to your normal email accounts but rather the mission critical application accounts.

Internet Connection Failure

The table below illustrates the impact on your business operations of an Internet connection failure when you are a Managed Mail user:

In this scenario, Internet services will be available via the wireless router supplied as part of the Managed Mail service;

• EDI Messaging will not be impacted as the wireless router will enable your Managed Mail service to be supplied; and
• Other office emails may be impacted depending upon your use of the wireless router.

Please note: Locally Hosted Email services will not be available even if you have the wireless router supplied as part of Managed Mail.

For further information please contact Commerce Plus on 1300 552 393 or support@commerceplus.net.au