IT and the Economy – AppRiver

by Steve Ragan - Nov 17 2009, 16:55

AppRiver COO Scott Cutler has taken the time to answer our open questions regarding IT and the Economy. Things are still shaky when it comes to economics and IT, but businesses are working to dig themselves in for the long haul, and some sectors will do better than others, such as is the case with SaaS and AppRiver.

[Note: If you are in IT or are an IT Security vendor and would like to contribute to this topic, feel free to send your answers to security@thetechherald.com with the subject heading of 'IT and the Economy’. The responses are subject to editing and length. Please avoid product marketing or pitches, no sales or criticism of competition. Submissions for this feature will end on Dec. 31, 2009.]

Founded in 2002, AppRiver is centered on Web and Email security that comes as a service for scalability. Scott Cutler, formerly AppRiver’s Executive Vice President (EVP), was promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) in September.

The Tech Herald (TTH): Has the economy and fear concerning the economy impacted your business at all?

Scott Cutler (SC): Given the current economic landscape, businesses today are looking for more ways to operate efficiently. And as online threats continue to increase in sophistication, organizations are turning to hosted solutions as a cost-effective, viable alternative to maintaining IT services in-house. 

With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), even the small business owner is granted access to enterprise-grade applications in highly available datacenters for a fixed cost per employee per year, which is usually a fraction of the traditional in-house IT costs. Such on-demand, subscription-based security solutions allow companies to focus on their unique strategic initiatives rather than IT chores.  

Throughout the past year, demand for AppRiver’s security services has steadily increased since many organizations wish to mitigate the risk of threat exposure (i.e. protection from spam, viruses, worms, phishing, etc.) with easy-to-use SaaS solutions that not only save time, but money.

TTH: If it has, what are five initiatives you implemented to help manage the impact? If it has not, why? What are you doing to take advantage of this sudden fortune as others feel the heat?

SC: Fortunately for AppRiver, the SaaS market has experienced economic growth despite the waning economy. To accommodate demand, AppRiver developed a new feature-enriched, user-friendly Customer Portal that gives each customer a single point of entry for all services.

By integrating an entire technology suite into a single unified interface, AppRiver eliminates the complex processes businesses face as they manage their messaging environments. AppRiver has always embraced a customer-centric methodology, and the Customer Portal is just one more example of how the company strives to create a uniquely positive customer experience, from first contact to “post-op” support.

TTH: Has the economy impacted your vertical markets?

SC: Generally, security services fit well within vertical markets that have growing security regulations, and from an application perspective, e-mail filtering, compliance and archiving have grown in popularity over the last five years. AppRiver sees tremendous activity with any business that uses email since hosted email security solutions block all the garbage before it even enters an organization’s network.

At the highest level, hosted solutions add value to your client’s organization by reducing complexity, risk, time-to-solution and expensive hardware costs as it easily scales to a business’ evolving demands. Many hosted solutions are “must have’s” for nearly every organization, but these ubiquitous applications—like e-mail and e-mail security—require a great deal of effort and cost to operate while adding little to differentiate an organization’s core value to its constituents.

For example, e-mail, compliance (i.e. encryption and archiving), patch management, upgrades and employee training and retraining—all those constantly evolving demands—can be removed from IT’s plate by outsourcing to a hosted solution.

TTH: How are your customers looking at security or IT purchasing, and what are you doing to help them keep costs low while still offering them what they are looking for?

SC: Since its inception, AppRiver has sustained an impressive 95-percent customer retention rate while growing its customer base to more than 40,000 companies and over 6 million mailboxes worldwide. To continue this growth curve, AppRiver provides value-added services backed by Phenomenal Customer Care.

One example is found in AppRiver’s Exchange Hosting service, which automatically includes free SecureTide Spam and Virus Protection, unlimited mailbox storage and optimized connectivity and reliability as a result of the company’s partnership with Akamai Technologies.

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