Atmail is an email platform solution company from Australia. With 20 years of email expertise serving telecommunications and hosting providers across every continent, Atmail currently powers more than 170 million mailboxes worldwide. In an interview with Telecom Review, Atmail’s Chief Sales Officer, Erik Jan Rijnders, explains why telcos should move their customer email platform to the cloud.
Can you tell us more about cloud-hosted email platforms and why Atmail is important for telecom operators?
Although email is one of the oldest services on the internet, it still remains the most important service. There are a couple of billion mailbox routes and we power 170 million of them. If you already own a domain name and use it for your email accounts, our cloud-hosted email platform enables you to do everything you currently do with email, contacts and calendars, but will enable you to do it from anywhere simply by logging into your mailbox from any device connected to the Internet. For telcos and service providers who have committed to the cloud, email hosting is often one of the first services to be transitioned. This is because running email platforms in-house is not their core business capability. So, it makes sense to migrate email first. It reduces infrastructure and operation costs.
There are many reasons why we are important for telcos. It increases a company’s ability to scale email userbase, storage and computing power without having to purchase any hardware. It adds more value to the company in many ways. By freeing up in-house resources, it can allow an organisation to focus on core business and strategic initiatives, rather than worrying about taming spam and maintaining email servers. In addition, with 5G on the way, telcos are stretching their CAPEX budgets to the max. It’s becoming smarter for telcos to administer OPEX models where possible. Cloud-hosted email shifts the cost from telcos to external cloud providers. Cloud computing represents one of the biggest fundamental shifts in technology architecture in our lifetime. It is the first step in achieving a broader pro-cloud vision for telcos.
How important are partnerships to Atmail in finding the best solutions for your customers?
We are a small company, so partnerships are paramount to us. We have teamed up with many cloud solution providers in order to extend our reach in the market. Strategic partnerships allow us to operate in other cloud ecosystems. We work with email and messaging specialists who have a very specific knowledge. We work with people all over the world from Australia to Europe. In relation to sales, it’s important to have resellers. We are a software and cloud-based company so without partnerships, we would not have the same reach.
How do you address security concerns that telcos or other organizations might have in relation to cloud-based email?
In general, cloud computing is far more secure than traditional computing. Spam and phishing emails are on the rise and are very difficult to control. These types of emails cause damage to brands and are a real threat. Antispam, antivirus, antiphishing and other premium offerings can generally be added easily on-demand in a cloud-hosted environment. Cloud-hosted email solves a problem of staff neglecting to update or replace software on time and thus leaving telcos and service providers exposed to security and compliance breaches. Therefore, cloud-hosted emails are more secure and add a lot of benefits to companies.
Google and Microsoft are providing this service. Why do you think telcos should choose Atmail?
First and foremost, we are providing an excellent service at an excellent price. This is something we are really good at. If you compare us to Google or Microsoft, we are providing the same service for half the price and we empower our customers’ brand, not our own, which is not something that Google or Microsoft are doing. Although we are a small company, we are fast-growing. Our revenue has doubled year-on-year over the past two years. With 24/7 support, you can rely on our professional services team for a smooth transition and an email platform that is secure, stable and highly scalable.
