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1. Understanding Email Hybrids

We live in an era of hybrid everywhere – hybrid cars, hybrid plants, hybrid apps, and now email hybrids. The term hybrid refers to mixing two or more plans and choosing the best of them. Before we discuss hybrid email solutions, let’s discuss a common business scenario.

Scenario

It is almost likely you will not be giving a corner (or private) office to all your employees. Rather, you will likely have criteria like this:

1. MD, CEO, CIO, CTO, and senior managers get a private (corner) office.
2. Managers and below have a workstation in a shared open workspace.

You assign private offices (with a door) to the MD and other top-level managers because of their seniority and need for higher security and privacy. Additionally, they are likely to need to hold more meetings of a confidential nature, more frequently. They may also have a higher need for security features because they handle more documentation of a confidential nature.

Your HR manager will also most likely have a private office because of the nature of their work. They will need to have many interviews, have private conversations including disciplinary hearings. They will have a lot of confidential documents in their offices. For instance, CVs, payslips, and so on that will need to be kept safe and confidential.

Your MD, CEO, and other senior managers may also have access to expensive company cars, housing allowances in leafy suburbs, Golf club memberships, premium medical cover, fully paid annual holidays, school fees allowances for their children as well as credit cards because they need to entertain clients as part of business development.

The other staff

On the other hand, your managers and other employees are likely going to be sitting in a general shared open workspace. They likely will not have access to company cars but may have access to company loans to buy personal cars. Additionally, they might have access to company mortgages but not have house allowances to live in leafy suburbs. They are also not likely to have perks such as school fees allowances or access to company credit cards. However, these employees are still able to perform their assigned duties effectively. For instance, they may take taxis to attend business meetings or use their personal cars and claim mileage from the company. Those in marketing or sales may be able to use their personal money for business lunches and submit claims for reimbursement from the company.

It is, therefore, logical to use this kind of criterion as it will save costs but still ensure everyone is able to achieve what they need to get done. 

Likewise, businesses can adopt the same thought process when selecting a solution for their business email and collaboration. This is the power of email hybrid solutions. 

2. Types of Email & Collaboration Hybrids

There are three types of email and collaboration hybrids:

1. Cloud-2-on-premise hybrid,
2. Cloud-2-cloud hybrid, and
3. Cloud-on-cloud hybrid.

Cloud-2-on-premise hybrid: A cloud and on-premise email hybrid is where an organization chooses to have some users on a cloud solution but maintain others on an on-premise server. The justification for this segregation is often because the cost of moving all users to the cloud is too high. However, this is not an ideal solution because despite moving to the cloud, you will still have to contend with the myriad of issues plaguing on-premise mail servers. If you are not already familiar with these, you can read more on the challenges of on-premise or self-hosted email hosting solutions here.

Cloud-2-cloud hybrid: This type of hybrid entails an organization having one group of users hosted by one cloud provider and another group of users by a different cloud provider.  Cloud solutions present a wide range of benefits to organizations. You can read more about the benefits of cloud email solutions here.

Here are two common email hybrids and how they work

Hybrid of MailSafi + Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Hybrid of MailSafi Email + Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)

Cloud-on-cloud hybrid: This type of hybrid entails having users set up on two or more different cloud plans but by the same service provider. MailSafi offers a cloud-on-cloud hybrid of MailSafi Business + MailSafi Enterprise. Or, in some cases, the hybrid can also include MailSafi Basic.

3. Why You Should Consider a Business Email Hybrid for Your Organization

Email and collaboration hybrids are necessary because businesses need higher availability and reliability in their communications at a cost-effective price.

Businesses already using various premium cloud solutions are realizing that only power users are utilizing the full potential of these solutions while general users are only using the basic features.

While businesses may be enticed by premium business email hosting services, it might not make business sense to invest in premium features for all users. This rationale is what has led to the evolvement of business email hybrids. To reduce the total cost of ownership without depriving power users of their productivity, you can opt for a hybrid business email solution for your business.

When it comes to email and collaboration, it is not necessarily that the power user will be an MD, CEO, CTO, or even at the management level. The power user may be a marketing assistant or a financial analyst who needs to analyze a lot of data/collaborate with other colleagues in real-time. The key is in doing a needs-based analysis of your users to identify who are power users and who are basic users.

Power users may need messaging platforms not just with email but with advanced collaboration features:

1. Access to email anytime, anywhere
2. Video/audio chat, calls
3. Online storage drive to create and share spreadsheets and presentations
4. File sharing and synchronization features
5. Advanced threat protection (spam, virus, malware filtering)

Group your users

An email hybrid allows you to group your users according to their needs/requirements. What does Ann in HR need to do her work? Does she need email only or does she also need to collaborate? What does Josh, the cleaner, need to get his work done? Does he need email only or does he also use collaboration tools? What does the CEO need? And so on.

Once you have grouped your users according to their needs, you can then invest in a premium service for the users who need both email and collaboration, and only pay for email for the group of users that does not require collaboration tools.

By grouping your users, you can then only pay for what you need for each group of users. For more specific cost savings examples you can check out our blogs on:

Hybrid of MailSafi Email + Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)

Hybrid of MailSafi Email + Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Get in touch with us for a quote for your business and we will discuss and work out for you what you stand to save by opting for MailSafi as an alternative email service.