Protect sensitive data with secure, easy to use, policy-based email encryption.

Email has become the primary means of business communications and, as a result, the need to protect individual messages has increased significantly.

Computer usernames and passwords, financial data, medical histories, bank account numbers, legal documents, and other personal information is sent via email every day and ensuring the security of this information from email sender to the recipient is critical in avoiding a breach of data security and maintaining compliance with government regulations.

CDMworld highly secure policy-based email encryption service eliminates the constant threat of data theft and ensures your business is in compliance with the ever increasing number of new laws governing the electronic distribution of personal data.

Features

Policy-Based And On-Demand Email Encryption

CDMworld web-based email encryption service enables a company administrator to assign individual policies per employee, automatically applying encryption to the newly created emails and preventing users from having to remember to manually encrypt each email they send.

No intervention is required from the sender, as emails are scanned automatically searching for keywords associated with the specific policies selected.

This automated search guarantees that your corporate data policies are adhered to and administered properly each time.

Content-based policies:

• HIPPA: Medical records or other health related information
• GLBA: Financial data or bank account information
• SSN: Social security numbers
• PCI: Credit card data

Easy Account Administration

Should a user wish to manually encrypt an individual email which would not be included in the automated encryption policies, it can easily be done by including the word [encrypt] in any individual email’s subject line.

CDMworld online email encryption service can be setup quickly with just a few mouse clicks.

No technical knowledge is required and the small monthly, per user fee eliminates the high costs normally associated with secure messaging systems.

• Web-Based Policy Management: The content-based policies are managed from an online control panel which can be accessed on-demand from any computer with an internet connection.
• Automated Encryption Key: There’s no need to get the IT team involved with email encryption keys.

An encryption key is automatically generated each time a new email is created.

The encrypted message is then sent to the recipient and the new encryption key is sent to the Hosted Key Service simultaneously.

Upon receipt of the email, the authentication key is requested and the recipient is able to decrypt their message.

Ease Of Use

This automated online encryption service runs in the background, unseen by the user, but can also be initiated manually when required.

It does not require any new hardware or software installation, server monitoring, or encryption key management. Your technical team can spend their time on more strategic activities.

Content sensitive emails are automatically encrypted and decrypted without end user involvement.

However, should an email be deemed sensitive by the end user, it can be encrypted quickly and easily by including the word [encrypt] in the email’s subject line.

Low Cost

CDMworld email encryption service is subscription-based.

The small monthly per user fee ensures you pay for only the service you need – nothing more.*

The service can be purchased for a limited number of users or your entire office – it’s up to you.

No new hardware or software is required and there are no contracts to sign.

Any web browser and internet-enabled computer can be used.

*CDMworld hosted Exchange email service is required to enable email encryption.

Law 201 CMR 17.00 pertains to “every person that owns or licenses personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth,” and requires “encryption of all transmitted records and files containing personal information that will travel across public networks, and encryption of all data containing personal information to be transmitted wirelessly.” ANY company which houses, manages, processes or distributes the personal data of Massachusetts residents is required to guarantee its protection.

The electronic transmission of a names, credit card numbers, bank account or debit card numbers, financial records, driver’s license numbers and social security numbers must not be distributed to others without encryption of the email in which it is contained.

Enforcement of this law will include up to a $5,000 fine per violation and up to $50,000 for each instance of improper disposal of personal data.

CDMworld’s highly secure, web-based email encryption service helps remove the risks associated with data loss, regulatory and corporate policy violations. Our policy-based email encryption service is easy to use, does not require any technical knowledge and eliminates the administrative overhead associated with traditional encryption systems. Emails can be encrypted on-demand by the end user, or by the company’s administrator using content-based policies which will automatically encrypt messages based on the use of sensitive or personal information.



CDMworld can help you grow your business without the need to increase overhead.

When you become a CDMworld reseller you can provide your customers with private branded services and professional support for applications like Microsoft Exchange Email, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Blackberry Enterprise Server, WebEx WebOffice, Web Design Services, Web Hosting, SEO consulting and more.

You can also provide powerful Cloud Computing and dedicated servers hosted in our secure data centers allowing you and your customer the benefits of the cloud computing model.

Do you want to grow your business?

Enjoy the benefits of being a CDMworld reseller and expand your service offerings in an instant.

Contact CDMworld today for more information.

Would you like to have a secure web location that allows you to share the data across your team without having any software to purchase, any hardware to purchase or any other capital investments? Would you like to be on-line with all your data in a matter of hours? Would you like to private brand the on-line application to your company?

CDMworld provides low cost applications hosting and development. We can take your spreadsheet and data and provide you with a fully hosted, secure, Software as a Service (SaaS) application in a matter of hours. You can start sharing your data in a robust database format that allows for reporting, calendars, schedules, tasks and so much more.

We are so confident that you will love the application we will even set up your application and data for FREE and give you a FREE trail. If you love it you just pay a simple monthly per user fee for hosting and support. If you don’t then you own us nothing.

Contact CDMworld today and let us show you how you can go from Spreadsheet to Collaboration today!

The application currently allows for the managment of environmental inspections and OSHA saftey managment proceedures. The CDMworld application provides for multi-layered user security and includes user profile customization and private branding for the contractor.

Some of the features of this application are:

• NPDES Stormwater Management
• Inspection Reporting
• Corrective Action Management
• Calendar and Scheduling across unlimited calendars
• Automated Notifications and Escalation
• OSHA Safety Managment
• Operator yearly physical tracking
• Equipment Management
• Small Tool Tracking

CDMworld is delivering the application on a per user pricing model that has already proven a return on investment within the first week of usage.The utilization of this SaaS electronic management system allows employees, subcontractors, and regulatory personnel controlled access to required documentation without the expense of overnight shipping or site visitation when document audit is required. This savings along with the savings of employee time used prior to the CDMworld application have an estimated cost savings of over one hundred thousand dollars across the life of the project.

The application requirements were communicated to the CDMworld team including the need to incorporate current data from disparate system and the entire application was fully deployed within three weeks of inception.

For more information contact CDMworld at 866-447-6953

CDMworld offers Platform as a Service to develop, test, deploy, host and maintain applications in the same integrated development environment without the need to make capital investments in servers, operating systems, backup systems, or security protocols

The CDMworld PaaS offerings provide different combinations of services to support the application development lifecycle. Comprehensive PaaS should provide all service options in an integrated development environment within the actual target delivery platform, with source code control, version control, dynamic (interactive) multiple user testing, roll out and roll back with the ability to audit and track who made what changes when to accomplish what purpose

CDMworld web based user interface creation tools

CDMworld PaaS offerings provide support to ease the creation of user interfaces based on standards such as HTML, AJAX, and JavaScript or other Rich Internet Application technologies like Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR. Our rich, interactive, multi-user environments and scenarios can be defined and managed by real people (non-programmers), with tools that make it easy. Creation tools allow you to create interfaces defined for different user profiles by function or expertise. CDMworld PaaS offers improved user experience by incorporating channels for real people feedback through out creation, design, development, testing, rollout, production … the entire lifecycle through to ‘end-of-life” “reincarnation” or “next generation evolution” of the application.

Multi-tenant architecture

CDMworld PaaS offerings support the use of the application by many concurrent users, providing concurrency management, scalability, failover and security. The architecture enables defining the “trust relationship” between users in security, access, distribution of source code, navigation history, user (people and device) profiles, interaction history, and application usage.

Integration with web services and databases

Support for SOAP and REST interfaces allow CDMworld PaaS offerings to create compositions of multiple Web services, sometimes called “Mashups” as well as access databases and re-use services maintained inside private networks. Support for keeping the user/relationships (if multiple users)/device context and profile through the mashup across web services, databases and networks.

Support for development team collaboration

The ability to form and share code with ad-hoc or a pre-defined or distributed team greatly enhances the productivity of the CDMworld PaaS offerings. Schedules, objectives, teams, action items, owners of different areas of responsibilities, roles (designers, developers, tester, QC) can be defined, updated and tracked based on access rights.

Utility-grade instrumentation

CDMworld PaaS offerings provide developers insight into the inner workings of their applications, and the behavior of their users. Some CDMworld PaaS offerings use information about user behavior to enable pay-per-use billing.

For more information or to set up your PaaS environment today contact CDMworld at 866-447-6953

Designed for your business

CDMworld Exchange with Hosted BlackBerry® Enterprise Server is specifically designed to meet the needs of small to medium businesses that don’t want the headache and expense of managing their email system or wireless solution on their own.

CDMworld Hosted BlackBerry® Enterprise Server is server software that’s managed for you by us – your expert provider. This means you can take advantage of the full productivity of a big business BlackBerry solution, with no need for internal IT resources or support. You and your employees stay connected to people and information on the go seamlessly, using BlackBerry smartphones – with secure, wireless access to email, calendar, contacts, business data, Internet, and more. Meanwhile, we manage everything for you, behind the scenes.

Choosing hosted Exchange with BlackBerry Enterprise Server allows for predictable and reliable spending. You pay no upfront costs for server hardware or software installation, and no on-going IT maintenance and support costs.  Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server is a subscription service with a monthly fee for each BlackBerry user. So you pay only for what you use.

Full BlackBerry wireless mobility. No compromises.

Being small doesn’t have to mean looking small. With hosted Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server service, you can be confident that your business has exactly the same functionality and productivity capabilities as major enterprises. The only difference is that you don’t have to manage a thing – you’re choosing a service that’s completely managed by us.

BlackBerry smartphones are easy to use and optimized for wireless. They’re compatible with a variety of applications beyond email. In addition, BlackBerry solutions are celebrated for ensuring world-class data security and reliability:

Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server software provides the full suite of advanced security features and IT policies that come with the self-managed BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, including AES or Triple DES encryption. So you can rest easy knowing your information stays protected and confidential: you’re arming your business with the same BlackBerry security that corporations and governments rely on.

All the information you and your employees send and receive wirelessly comes and goes through Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server software and our highly-secure hosted Exchange environment. Which means it’s safe and secure from start to finish.

If a BlackBerry smartphone is lost or stolen, it can be locked-down or erased immediately, so your information goes nowhere.

Easy to purchase. Easy to use.

Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server is available as an add-on feature to your hosted Exchange account. We take care of the management and administration, so you don’t have to. Your organization can be up and running with BlackBerry wireless mobility right away; there’s no installation or work required to get started. And getting to know your BlackBerry smartphone won’t take long either: they’re designed to be intuitive – so new users can become expert users in no time.

CDMworld Encrypted Message allows your customers to send emails with end-to-end encryption – so important documents such as contracts or company plans can be safely and securely sent via email.

Why encrypt email?

Email is a convenient, fast and efficient way to communicate and share important information.  However, it is an inherently insecure medium, as emails travels through multiple public and private networks and data lines between sender and recipient.  Because email by default is sent in a unencrypted format, anyone who can intercept the email in transit, can easily access of its its contents, including any attachments.

By encrypting email with Encrypted Message, only the sender and recipients, who have a special decryption key, can read the contents of the message and its attachments.  If someone intercepts an encrypted message, or tries to access it without permission and the decryption key, they will be unable to read the email or its attachment.

Who Should Encrypt email?

All businesses, and their professional advisors, agents and clients should take steps to protect the privacy of their email. Businesses that need encrypted email include:

Financial Services – Banks, brokerages, insurance companies, wealth management, accountants, financial advisors

Healthcare – Physicians, clinics, health associations, health networks, hospitals, pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies

Business Professionals – Lawyers, headhunters, investigators, consultants, human resource professionals, embassies

Businesses need to be able to trust email communications and reduce the risk of damage to their brand. Professional advisors such as lawyers, financial advisors, accountants, educators, and healthcare providers, all have ethical and fiduciary duties to keep their clients’ personal information confidential.

Regulatory Compliance controls risk and maximizes security

Governments have enacted legislative measures to protect the privacy and reliability of business and personal information. Encrypted Message meets these industry-specific privacy legislations including:

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is an example of legislation that protects personal information sent amongst health care professionals, such as patient health records, test results, x-rays, and prescriptions, are used, disclosed, and protected.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) governs integrity of financial operations of publicly traded companies with the primary goal of protecting “investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to securities laws”.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) required that all financial institutions (i.e., businesses engaged in banking, insuring, stocks and bonds, financial advice and investing) maintain safeguards to protect customer information.

California Security Breach Notification Act (SB 1386) required that companies, in the event of a

breach of the security system of a database containing personal information (e.g. social security

number; driver’s license number of California Identification Card number; or account number, credit or debit card number, notify all California residents whose unencrypted personal information was in the database at the time of the data breach.

Fully managed email encryption solution

If your customer is already using your  hosted Exchange service, then encrypting your mail is easy.   With Encrypted Message, users can quickly, easily and intuitively send email with confidence. Encrypted Message is built on industry-trusted encryption standards, and provides the tools you need to simply and easily administer users. We host and manage the hardware and software needed to enable encryption and decryption processes, and management of digital identities. We administer the system and support you while you control your users.

How does it work?

The Encrypted Message solution includes a small desktop plug-in the works with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.  Customers compose their email messages, add any attachments, click the “Secure” button on the Encrypted Message plug-in toolbar, set their encryption password, and hit “send.”  It’s that easy.   When the recipients receive the message, Encrypted Message will prompt them for the password, and then decrypts the message.  This simple process allows customers to quickly encrypt and decrypt messages without the hassle of managing a security and key infrastructure.

How Secure is it?

Encrypted Message uses standards-based technologies such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), S/MIME and X.509 certificates to enable the parties in a dialogue to establish confidentiality, message integrity and user authentication.  This ensures the best commercially available encryption security for your messages.

What attachments does it support?

Encrypted Message can encrypt any MS Office document, .PDF file, image files, and almost any other popular file format.

Contact CDMworld at 866-447-6953 extension 701 for more information

The benefits of enterprise email and collaboration are now available as a service (SaaS) through our new Business Productivity Suite (BPS).  Microsoft Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, all delivered as a hosted service, with no deployment effort, zero maintenance and no upfront costs. All these services are combined into one simple package, along with an award-winning control panel for 24×7 management. Learn more about BPS and discover many ways your company will benefit.

Business Productivity Suite features

Microsoft Exchange 2007

The core of Business Productivity Suite is Microsoft Exchange 2007, a powerful email server and collaboration platform that enables the advanced sharing capabilities of Microsoft Outlook.

• Business-class email with your domain(s)
• Delegate access – enable others to read mail, and send mail on your behalf.
• Personal and Shared contacts, calendars and tasks
• Public folders
• Scheduling tools
• Premium anti-virus and anti-spam tools
• 2GB of pooled storage space per user
• Free download of Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008 for each user
• Outlook Web Access
• Offline access
• Global Address List
•  Personal and shared distribution lists

Office Communications Server 2007

Office Communications Server 2007 integrates with Exchange 2007 to add secure messaging and presence capabilities.

• Secure Instant Messaging & group chat
• Person to person voice and video chat
• Chat archive through MS Outlook
• Real-time presence capabilities through Communicator, MS Outlook, SharePoint and Web client
• Free download of Communicator client for each user

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

• SharePoint is a web-based
•  Document Storage and management
•  Check-in/check-out
•  Blogs and wikis
• Application templates
• Project management
•  1GB storage

 Control Panel

Our award-winning, web-based control panel for managing your Business Productivity suite account and settings.

• Role-based access
• User management
• Real-time provisioning of mailboxes, wireless devices and add-on services
• Storage management
• Audit-log

Enterprise Infrastructure

We host one of the largest and most sophisticated infrastructures for Exchange, SharePoint and OCS2007 in the world from multiple top-rated data centers.

• All Dell Servers
• Cisco networking infrastructure
• Dell/EMC SAN storage

Load balancing and clustering for maximum performance and high availability

• Multiple high-bandwidth Internet connections
• Redundant power supplies and environmental controls

Business Productivity Suite benefits

Efficient Communications

Business Productivity Suite facilitates fast and efficient communications among your team, especially across multiple offices and geographies. Utilize email, voice, and instant messaging for the optimal interaction for each situation. Leverage presence capabilities to immediately identify who is available, and when unavailable colleagues are scheduled to become free.

Better Collaboration

The Business Productivity Suite helps teams work better together. Everyday tasks including meeting scheduling, document editing and versioning, and project management that normally consume unnecessary time can now be accomplished quickly and easily.  Business Productivity Suite facilitates workflows for common processes to help your team collaborate efficiently.

Anywhere Access

We offer many choices for accessing your Business Productivity Suite applications and data. From access through desktop clients, to web clients, to mobile devices, including BlackBerry smartphones, you can access the information you need, regardless of the devices you use. And with Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can even access your cached emails while offline.

No Capital Investment

The Business Productivity suite is delivered to you as a service through world-class data centers, which you can access from anywhere, anytime. You do not have to invest in any hardware or software, or pay for a long and costly deployment. For a low monthly fee, the entire service is delivered to you as a turnkey solution, ready to go from the start.

Flexibility

The Business Productivity Suite is flexible to adapt to the needs of your business. With no annual contracts or any hardware or software to purchase, we do not lock up you or your money. You can easily add or remove users as needed to scale up or down with the needs of your business.

Fully Managed Service

The Business Productivity Suite is delivered as a fully managed service. Your monthly fee per user includes all hardware and software, a highly-available infrastructure hosted from multiple world-class data centers, premium 24×7 support, security, and maintenance and upgrades. We focus on providing you the best possible turn-key service so you can focus on your business.

Freedom of Choice

We offer you the greatest breadth of choices for using the service. Windows, Mac or Linux; BlackBerry smartphone or iPhone, we let you use the platforms and tools you need for your business with the Business Productivity Suite 

Simple Set up, Migration, and Management

Our award-winning control panel is a powerful web-based control panel that gives administrators and end-users the flexibility and control they need to manage the service, settings and data. We also provide tools for user synchronization and bi-directional data migration to help you configure your service and start benefiting from it as quickly as possible.

When the economy takes a downward turn, corporate IT budgets are usually one of the first casualties.  This is the case with the current recession, as evidenced by an October 2008 CIO Magazine survey in which 40 percent of 234 IT chiefs surveyed said they are cutting spending, essentially freezing new IT initiatives, if not scrapping them altogether.  

However, technology is a critical element of business, and despite the current economic climate, the need for reliable IT remains the same—especially when it comes to fundamental business applications such as email or customer relationship management (CRM). As companies across all industries face tough decisions about where to put their limited dollars, here are three key reasons why the hosted or “software as a service” (SaaS) model makes a great deal of sense.

Financing

Most companies rely on some form of financing for technology purchases (hardware or software), either through a vendor-sponsored payment plan, a specialty leasing agent or a straight bank loan. When credit markets are tight, it’s difficult for many organizations, particularly smaller ones, to secure tech financing. And tight credit markets go hand in hand with a precarious economy.

On October 27, 2008 The Wall Street Journal reported a jump in defaults on tech financing loans, coming after “years in which such loans flowed freely.” During this period, lenders regularly offered tech financing for 0 percent interest or no money down to businesses with limited liquid assets—mirroring the risky (if not reckless) approach that led to the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market. And the results have been similarly disastrous. According to the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, which represents 700 lenders, the number of equipment loans written off as losses jumped from .48 percent in September 2007 to .86 percent in 2008, a leap of nearly 80 percent. And Baytree Leasing Company LLC, which specializes in tech financings, confirmed in October 2008 that its default rate for commercial businesses is now between 1 and 1.5 percent. To give some perspective to those figures, research firm Aite Group has predicted that in Q3 2008 the percentage of real estate loans being written off as losses by the top 100 U.S. commercial banks will be around 1 percent.

As a result of the spike in defaults, specialty lenders and banks, on which companies once relied to fund their IT initiatives, are now charging higher interest rates and requiring more money down, making it much more difficult to secure financing. Long gone is the zero-interest loan. Today a standard interest rate for small businesses is hovering around 8.25 percent.   

Joining banks and tech-financing businesses, hardware and software vendors that lend money directly to customers are also toughening their terms. Many now require a significant upfront payment—often up to 50 percent for software—to offset the risk of default. (Software vendors suffer more from defaults because reselling used software is illegal. Reselling used hardware is not.)

The impact of the financing crunch on smaller businesses is twofold. First, it is simply harder to secure loans. In October 2008 the CIO Executive Council reported that nearly 20 percent of 31 CIOs surveyed postponed or canceled purchases specifically because of unfavorable credit terms, demonstrating how difficult, if not impossible, it now is for many companies to implement on-premise IT deployments—and foster growth—because they just can’t afford them. And in a down economy, while overall costs are important, day-to-day cash flow is vital. That means that even when financing is available, the jump in upfront payments can be a deal breaker for many smaller companies.

Second, when money is tight, few companies want to—or can afford to—take on unnecessary risk. And for IT executives, risk comes in the form of long-term commitment to a particular hardware or software purchase. If a company is able to secure tech financing in a difficult credit market, the costs have increased, reducing the overall ROI of the technology acquisition. That translates into increased pressure for the investment to result in a successful IT initiative.

Flexibility

A word commonly used by the media in a down economy is “uncertainty.” Uncertainty about the markets. Uncertainty about employment. Uncertainty about the future. Despite endless analysis and predictions from expert (and highly paid) financial pundits, the truth is that no one really knows when things are going to get better. While the frenzied speculation keeps media outlets around the world in business, speculation is exactly what it is. In July 2008 the ever provocative Huffington Post featured a blog entry by Margaret Heffernan called “The Recession Narrative: Pundits Know Nothing.”

For smaller businesses, the one certainty about uncertainty is that it demands flexibility around IT infrastructure and applications. In this case, flexibility means the ability to accommodate growth and reductions. While in-house software can scale up as your company grows, it doesn’t work the other way around. The same goes for the associated hardware.

Take Microsoft Exchange for email. If a company with 500 employees uses an in-house Exchange server, in addition to buying all the hardware (primary and backup servers, networking equipment, storage), it must also buy 500 client access licenses (CALs ), plus pay for ongoing support. Each CAL costs around $70 and is non-refundable. As the company grows, it must purchase a new CAL for each employee, even if that person is a seasonal or temporary hire for the holidays, a common situation when businesses can’t afford to staff permanent positions. Most (if not all) employees need email accounts, regardless of how long they are going to be around to use them.

For on-premise deployments of CRM software, user licenses are even more expensive. For example, a single user license for Oracle’s Siebel CRM Professional for mid-sized companies costs $350 for a base application (sales option, service option or marketing automation). Add-on modules for additional functionality run from $60 up to $2500 per module per user, and support is an additional annual per-user fee.

If that same company suddenly needs to lay off 20 percent of its workforce, it now has 100 CALs that it can’t use, plus an undetermined number of Oracle/Siebel licenses it can’t use (assuming not every employee uses all elements of the company’s CRM system). That’s a lot of money down the drain for a smaller business, especially when money is already tight.

The flexible SaaS model, on the other hand, is based around scaling the software up or down with your business. Hosted solutions allow you to add users on demand and remove them on demand. You pay on a monthly basis only for active users. And in a down economy, the likelihood of having to lay off active users goes up, which is why this approach makes sense when business is slow. 

A SaaS model also allows you to add and remove software, not just users, on demand. For example, you could lease SharePoint just for a special six-month project. Or you could decide that your business just can’t afford mobile connectivity for every user right now. In an on-premise solution, you have already paid for the functionality, so you’re in a “use it or lose it” situation. In the SaaS model, you can turn off mobile connectivity, and then turn it back on in three months when cash isn’t as tight.

The flexibility of a SaaS model also results in faster time to ROI. With in-house software, you have to buy everything, set it up, test it, etc. It may be a long time before your company sees any value from it. With SaaS, you see instant results, or at least much quicker results. This is always important, but it increases in importance in a down economy.

Staffing

While layoffs may be inevitable in a down economy, your customers will expect the same level of attention, service and quality they have always received. Successful companies recognize this and go above and beyond to preserve customer loyalty by showing them that it’s business as usual, even when it’s not.

Moving to a hosted or SaaS model allows you to reduce headcount without impacting the customer experience. How? Because it eliminates the need for expensive in-house IT experts. Going back to the example of Microsoft Exchange, proper maintenance requires at least one full-time, trained IT professional, which can easily cost six figures in annual salary and benefits. Freeing up that money will allow you to save positions that will have a direct impact on your customers.

In October 2008 the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported 2,269 companies had cut at least 50 jobs in the previous month, the highest number since the aftermath of the Sept.  11, 2001 attacks. Many economists predict that unemployment will jump from the current 6.1 percent to near 8 or 8.5 percent by the end of 2009, resulting in the highest unemployment rate the country has seen in more than 20 years.

While the accuracy of those predictions has yet to be determined, the current reality is bleak enough.  When layoffs are unavoidable, a SaaS model can help preserve the positive experience your customers have with your company.

Conclusion

In any economy, there’s no question that SaaS solutions are a smart option for smaller companies. They can be up and running quickly. They don’t require a degree in computer science to administer. They are reliable. They can scale with your business. They even reduce your organization’s impact on the environment.

In a recession, however, the benefits of SaaS are even more pronounced. While budgets everywhere are being squeezed or cut, businesses must continue to operate, and essential business applications such as email or CRM simply can’t be compromised if companies are to stay competitive. Neither can productivity or customer service. This puts a great deal of pressure on companies to spend their money wisely. When every penny counts more than it ever has, the cost structure and flexibility of hosted solutions, along with the fact that they don’t require expensive in-house IT expertise, make the SaaS model  an especially wise choice.