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As the ongoing threat of anthrax injects fear and danger into the circulation of physical mail, online delivery alternatives such as e-mail and secure document delivery applications are garnering a second look from businesses and government agencies seeking reliable and safe ways to communicate with customers and partners.

Recent occurrences of anthrax-laced mail have given organizations a new reason to re-examine the existing benefits of e-mail and secure online delivery services, such as cost savings and convenience, according to Dana Gardner, research director at Aberdeen Group in Boston.

"Now is the time to re-evaluate the benefits of securely delivered e-mail," Gardner says.

"It is unfortunate that this needs to be a reason for people to reconsider or re-evaluate e-mail, but it is a good reason on its own without these unfortunate circumstances," Gardner says.

Moreover, transitioning to e-mail for customer communications can help organizations forge a digital bond with customers, which will prove beneficial in the long run, Gardner points out.

More Than Money

"The benefit goes beyond cost savings and convenience," he says. "The fact that [e-mail] is a two-way link and provides a directory entry that includes e-mail will benefit organization in many ways down the line, particularly as Web services and context and collaboration become more prevalent."

The anthrax incidents, coupled with technology improvements in the past year and the passage of the e-signature law, will help speed the adoption of online delivery services in enterprises, according to Sue Barsamian, senior vice president of marketing at Critical Path, a San Francisco-based messaging infrastructure provider.

"This is going to be a very strong catalyst to hasten the migration to secure online delivery service. The migration is inevitable because it is more cost-effective than the physical delivery alternative," she says.

Critical Path's recently released Registered Mail Server, which lets businesses deliver and receive documents over a secure Internet connection, aims to address the issue of integrating secure message delivery with existing messaging systems, according to Michael Serbinis, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Critical Path.

"The stumbling block of most secure messaging is that it has not been integrated with e-mail and directory technology [for providing] security credentials," he says. "Registered Mail Server is an integrated platform, so secure messaging is just another type of messaging now available."

Size Doesn't Matter

Another vendor, Digital Signature Trust, offers a secure document delivery system that allows users to send any size of electronic document and track the delivery and receipt, says Greg Worch, senior vice president of Digital Signature Trust, in Salt Lake City.

Dubbed CertainSend, the system operates as simply as e-mail but allows businesses to send large documents that would overwhelm an e-mail connection and guarantee delivery, he says.

With the dozens of online delivery systems nipping at its heels, the U.S. Postal Service has been ramping up online services over the past five years, and recent safety problems may provide the impetus to develop a national electronic postal service, says Bill Robertson, senior vice president of Boulder, Colorado-based NETdelivery, which provides the technology behind the electronic postal service in Canada and Sweden.

The anthrax threat "is having an untold impact on businesses and governments across the United States because of the interruptions of the mail distribution system, not to mention the terrible human toll," he says.

As a result, Robertson says, "businesses and governments will be looking at alternative methods that might reduce the risks and provide a more uninterrupted flow of communication."

With the two year-old success of the Canadian EPost as a model, and messaging technology capable of supporting billions of transactions per year, "there is no reason why a large-scale national electronic post implementation could not be installed in the United States," Robertson says.

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