Making the most of leading E-Mail solutions
Almost every business uses e-mail solutions, it is definitely the case that no business in the modern day can operate without e-mail infrastructure existing somewhere in the supply chain.
The question follows then: how does it work?
Much easier to ask than to explain! Electronic-mail (or E-mail) works broadly in the same way that a post office would. There is a sender, a recipient, an exchange which handles the mail, and where appropriate ‘proofing’ to make sure nothing suspicious gets in the post.
We’ll start with the foundation, the exchange itself.
We at Hayachi Services are particularly fond of enterprise-ready open source E-Mail solutions such as: Exim, Sendmail, Dovecot, Apache or Kolab. Our emails actually hosted partly by KolabNow who use Kolab Enterprise for their setup, as well on-premise using Exim and Kolab Enterprise (both used by FTSE-50 companies).
Many Microsoft systems depend on Sendmail for automated emailing and alerts, be under no illusion that E-Mail solutions are deeply rooted in projects such as the above.
Connection to your E-Mail server
You then need to consider how we send and receive e-mails, most people will either use a webmail interface, or applications such as Evolution or Thunderbird which enable end-users to securely connect to the E-mail server. Microsoft’s Outlook platform is incredibly powerful but also comes as a cost and is not as effective when you use non-Microsoft E-Mail solutions.
From these, you authenticate [that is, ‘log-in’] to your e-mail server from something like Evolution. When you send an e-mail the application asks the E-Mail infrastructure to fulfil the request and your recipient will receive their friendly hello through the internet.
Things to consider on E-Mail solutions
Securing your E-Mail solutions is incredibly important and you should investigate E-Mail encryption to avoid third-parties ‘listening in’ on your business’ activities.
Setting up an e-mail server is not easy by any means, and is usually best left to the specialists who live, breathe and develop such email systems. We would advise you let a specialist handle the hard bits and give you the security and service required of any professional services firm.
N.B. An overview is never as much fun as digging into a system, for those more technically minded or who are otherwise just curious we would suggest looking at the project hyperlinks as above for more information.
