In 2009, I was starting my IT career, and even then, the idea of running a local email server seemed like a colossal waste of resources. I started investigating what was then known as Google Apps for your domain as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers has been running an enterprise IT network since 2009. Through his experience implementing and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise-level Wi-Fi, 100 Macs and 100 iPads, Bradley will highlight the ways Apple IT Managers implement Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, stories from IT management trenches, and ways Apple can improve its products for IT departments.
In the current environment, running the e-mail server is the exception to the rule. Most organizations starting today will sign up for either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Both products are outstanding and will depend on the productivity applications you want to use (Google Docs vs. Word) as the one you are likely to choose. I have used and managed both and they are both first class products.
It’s been almost 11 years since I changed my organization’s MX records on Google and away from my self-managed Exchange server. I recently thought about its implications for the Apple-focused enterprise.
Why hosted emails matter
When the iPhone was launched, it did not have ActivSync support, which means that IT had to allow IMAP support to access your work email. Because C-level employees used the iPhone, IT had to do it bitterly. With iPhone OS 2.0, Apple licensed ActivSync from Microsoft so that the iPhone can talk natively with Exchange 2008 and later. If you weren’t at work at the time, you probably didn’t realize how complicated it was to set up corporate email on a smartphone. My first smartphone was a Treo 700 and it asked me to take the phone to IT to connect it.
Today, not only is it easy to add service email to all your devices, but it’s also easy to use any app you want! The flexibility that hosted email has brought to users is, in my opinion, the most important result of this transition.
Innovation by e-mail
Email is a tried and true technology that mainly uses open protocols. Google uses the open API for apps to connect to it, but email is still the universal job identifier. Despite Slack’s efforts to kill the emails, he is still alive.
We’ve seen a lot of innovations in e-mail application options as well, and this gives end users the opportunity to choose what kind of experience they want. Spark allows you to discuss an email between your team before sending it, making it useful for customer service emails. Spike turns email into a fast chat interface and removes headers and signatures. Twobird offers a streamlined Gmail interface with notes. Airmail offers a multitude of customization options. Canary puts security first. There are countless other options, so check out my guide to the best email apps for macOS and iOS if you want to find some great alternatives to Apple Mail.
Summarize why hosted emails matter
The beauty of the situation we are in for corporate customers is the employees choice while still talking to all their colleagues and clients. When an organization chooses to use Slack or Teams, everyone else must use that application. Regardless of the email platform used by an organization, employees can choose the application that works best. Someone in one department could use Spike’s online notes to track meetings, while someone else could use Spark’s third-party app integrations to send emails to an app like Todist. Employees can experiment and find the applications that work best for their workflows, yet get to talk to others. Because email is built on open technology with a few significant players, applications can focus on integration with a few vendors and build great technology on top of that. All this can happen without the need for IT to configure each application manually.
Of course, choosing the app is just a small reason why hosted email makes sense in the enterprise. Running an email server is a complicated and resource-intensive role, and it’s much better to trust Google and Microsoft to manage it.
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