Communication is a substantial but rarely considered cost of doing business; electronic mail is changing all that.
In 1976, Centec Corp., a small, year-old Reston, Va. -- based computer systems company, had a problem. The company, which manufactures computer products and provides process engineering services for other companies, was beginning to do business nationally. Centec needed to keep in touch with its laboratory in Salem, Va., with a new office in Fort lauderdale, Fla., and with clients throughout the country.
"We were calling all over the country because we were beginning to sell nationally," recalls Paul Minor, president and co-founder, "and we were building up a tremendous phone bill -- it was running around $5,000 a month." Centec had to cut the cost of communicating, but at the same time it needed to communicate even more.
Fortunately, chairman Charles Matheny, who taught courses in data communications before helping Minor set up Centec, had heard about electronic mail. EM was then a relatively new system of delivering messages by computer. "He recognized that this might be a way to increase our communications and also save some money," says Minor.
EM had potential for numerous applications that were just beginning to be perceived. Some of the earliest computer researchers discovered that before shutting down for the night they could type a message into a computer's memory for the morning shift to read. The notion of using a computer as an electronic "mailbox" formed the basis of EM.
The first true EM system, developed during the late 1960s, was Arpanet, an elaborate network that tied together companies and government offices involved in high-level research for the Department of Defense. By 1976, when Centec first became interested in a system of its own, only a few vendors sold EM systems or services. The market has grown, but it is still in its infancy. According to most estimates, there are only about 200,000 regular EM users in the United States.
The term electronic mail is used for a wide range of services and the related technology, from telex to INTELPOST, the Postal Service's new program of transmitting facsimiles of letters via the Intelsat satellite. But in the context of the modern office, EM is a computer-based message system. The beginner is advised to think of EM as a communication system using terminals and a computer. A chief executive officer, a secretary, or a sales manager can zip a memo to a person down the hall or dispatch a purchase order to a plant across the country; they can communicate with employees only, or with bankers, consultants, or heads of Fortune 500 companies who are also EM users.
For the most part, EM replaces telephone calls and written memos and letters. A company can compose and distribute an electronic newsletter; headquarters can dispatch copies of a new insurance form; an annual report can be edited by officers in different locations; engineers can check specs with their counterparts at another company. Security measures prevent someone else from reading a user's mail or sending junk mail. A system might involve only 2 people, or, in the case of an EM service such as International Computer Services's Dialcom, 30,000.
To use EM, one needs a terminal, the necessary software, and, for most business applications, a large minicomputer such as a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP11, which costs about $40,000. The terminal can be as simple as a keyboard and display unit easily attached to a telephone or as complex as the console of the largest mainframe. An EM program is elaborate and requires some power to run it. As with all things electronic, though, the trend is toward simplicity: Apple Computer Inc. now markets a $250 scaled-down EM software package, but it only permits Apple II+ owners to correspond instantaneously or overnight, using standard telephone lines. Terminals, software, and computer can be purchased, rented, or leased, either individually or as a system. The most basic requirement is a telephone.
Using EM is no more difficult than using a typewriter.One EM vendor claims to be able to teach someone to send messages in about five minutes. Sitting at a terminal, the user types in a personal identification number, the name of the person or group being addressed, the recipient's code number, and a message. Direct lines (in the case of an in-house system) or telephone lines carry the information to a central computer, where it is stored until the addressees retrieve it, by using a terminal much as the sender did. Messages may be read and then expunged from the computer's memory, filed for future reference, routed to a third party, or printed out if it is necessary to have a hard copy.
When it decided to use EM, Centec already had had some exposure to the process: One of Matheny's friends had been intimately involved in Arpanet and, because Centec did some defense-related work, there was a "mailbox" on the system for a while. But in 1976 only a handful of companies offered commercial EM.
Centec wasn't interested in an in-house system, which would have been far too expensive, so it shopped among the services. "We took a look at several," says Matheny, "but found that, in general, they were too complex. They'd been designed by computer people and had lots of marvelous features but were difficult for people to sit down and use. They were also somewhat slow and expensive."
Matheny also had friends at International Computer Services, a company based in nearby Silver Spring, Md., which was developing an EM package. He made some suggestions, and when they introduced Dialcom it was to his liking. Centec began using Dialcom in late 1977. Notes Matheny: "If the competition turned out to be more cost-effective, we'd look at them."
