Sometimes a quick win comes from just letting someone else's hardwareand software sweat the details of a complex process. Max Levchin, CTOof Mountain View, Calif.-based PayPal, found this out when hepurchased a $30,000 bulk e-mail delivery appliance from IronPortSystems.

PayPal, which has 17 million customers and sends out millions ofe-mails every week, was using a big collection of its ownmachines - running an open-source mailer program - to deliver all themessages. "If the [mail] engine broke, you'd have half a dozen guysworking on it," recalls Levchin, who remembered two or three blowoutsthat resulted in both a loss of business and customergoodwill.

Since the company installed the IronPort mail appliance, which isoptimized to assemble and send half a million messages an hour, aswell as handling bounce-backs and related issues, PayPal's maintenancecosts have dropped by 50 percent while stability greatly increased."It's a cheap packaged solution that takes away thecomplexity - definitely a great deal," says Levchin. One deal amongmany - apparently - for CIOs who are willing to look.