Determined not to be left out of a what industry researcher The Gartner Group (www.gartner.com) projects will become a $1.3-billion market this year, MCI WorldCom Corp. (www.wcom.com) will team with Critical Path Inc. (www.cp.net) today to launch MCI WorldCom Managed Email.
Targeted to medium and large businesses, the service will provide an a la carte menu of managed electronic mail, Internet messaging (both wireline and wireless) and collaboration services, the last of those anchored by Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) Exchange software. MCI WorldCom will integrate the networking and messaging services of its UUNet Internet and SkyTel wireless divisions with Critical Path hosting centers distributed worldwide.
"Our Fortune 100 and global 1,000 customers are demanding this kind of service, because email is becoming as business critical as telephony and postal services have been in the past," says Michael Barnes, director of messaging and mobility services for MCI WorldCom's business markets division. He pointed to analyst estimates that businesses will receive six to eight trillion emails this year.
Critical Path currently manages 55 million mailboxes and 25 million wireless messaging users. Noting that MCI WorldCom can "wrap" the service inside its far-reaching Internet VPN and frame relay business access services, Michael DiLascio, director of strategic partnerships for Critical Path, says, "It makes sense to go to their customer base together." The outsourced service should be particularly attractive to merging companies with incompatible mail systems, he adds.
In addition to making message servers accessible for in-office, work-at-home and mobile workers, MCI WorldCom Managed Email will offer 20 to 40 megabytes of storage for file sharing and collaboration.
The companies estimate that customers will garner 10 percent to 30 percent savings over the cost of in-house message management, depending on how many functions are outsourced. "The more services they get from us, the nicer the pricing," says Angela Holmes, senior manager of messaging services for MCI WorldCom's business markets division.
