Insurance firm The Co-operators has turned over management of its e-mail systems to IBM Canada in a five-year, $4-million agreement.
IBM will charge Co-operators on a per-user basis, which is expected to save the company about 40 per cent off the current costs of managing e-mail in-house.
There
will be different levels of e-mail usage available to employees and IBM will charge accordingly.
The transition for employees should be virtually invisible, says Co-operators CIO, Vivian Fong. “”We should regard e-mail like the telephone. It should always be there, it should always work,”” she said.
IDC Canada Ltd. analyst Jim Westcott says that although outsourcing e-mail is a new phenomenon, “”I think it’s definitely something people will consider (using). It’s really a non-core business function and I think that’s one of the reasons (Co-operators) did this deal.””