8 Reasons Cloud Email Is A Smart Move Now
If you've been dragging your feet on migrating your company's email to a cloud service, here's why it's time to reconsider.
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Earlier this month, Gartner reported that cloud email adoption is picking up significant steam in the enterprise. Additionally, the research firm said that those who haven't yet looked into migrating their internal email to a cloud provider "should question assumptions that public cloud email is not appropriate in their region, size, or industry." In other words, the benefits of a cloud-operated email system likely outweigh the drawbacks.
Gartner reports that 13% of publicly listed, global companies use cloud-based email -- almost exclusively from Microsoft or Google. So clearly, the market has plenty of room to grow. But many IT decision makers are not even considering the idea of cloud email because of preconceived notions and misinformation about reliability, ease of management, security, and industry regulations.
As with any new technologies, someone has to be the test case. In the United States, it's common for early adopters to be found in educational institutions. A few universities sought to adopt cloud email early on, sometimes with incentives from the provider. And while some schools ran into issues with migration, uptime, and accessibility, the majority of those problems were quickly resolved and the lessons learned have made the transition smooth these days.
Slowly but surely, a handful of enterprise organizations noticed the benefits gained by universities -- as well as by small businesses that were early adopters. It only took several successful cloud cases in the enterprise for adoption to really start to take off.
Here, we offer eight views on the current state of cloud-managed email services. You'll find information about various benefits, debunking of inaccurate beliefs, and details on the conveniences of cloud-hosted email. Our goal is to point out why cloud email is worth considering -- as well as put to rest any misinformation floating around regarding reliability and security concerns.
The bottom line: Many organizations are recognizing that email is becoming another commodity application that's more at home in the hands of a trusted partner versus a private data center.
What's your opinion on cloud email? Has your organization already migrated? If so, how did it go? And if you still don't think that cloud email is right for you, please let us know why and share your concerns with the InformationWeek community in the comments section below.
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When you operate an in-house email server, not only do you have to pay for the server, OS, and email platform, you also have to pay for the rack, electricity, cooling, and staff to support it. Depending on your situation, the cost of managing your own email server can be much higher than the per-user costs incurred when using a cloud service provider.
Unless you're working in an enormous enterprise, with a budget to match, you almost certainly don't have the disaster recovery infrastructure and processes that the likes of Microsoft, Google, and other major cloud email providers have. I've personally witnessed an internally managed email server die -- and subsequent attempts to recover lost data fail. Believe me, it's not pretty. So, if you truly are concerned about disaster recovery for your email, cloud providers almost certainly have you beat.
Along the same lines as disaster recovery, large email providers likely have a far more robust and sophisticated security posture than most companies can afford in a private data center. While a large cloud email provider might make an attractive target for hackers, they're able to employ the most modern tools to keep your data safe.
One common misconception of cloud email is the idea that even the best providers suffer from significant email outages -- and thus should be excluded as choices for enterprise-class email. In my experience, most major cloud providers manage impressively high percentages of uptime on a month-to-month and year-to-year basis. Granted, the impact of any downtime on your business can be painful, but in my opinion, the myth also persists because of the widespread media coverage that follows when a rare outage does occur.
Your workers are mobile. And because of this, your email should be accessible anywhere, and at any time. Cloud email is superior in this way because it's often distributed across multiple, global data centers. So, no matter where your employees are, they have a very uniform email access experience.
While advancements in virtualization and blade servers have improved the ability to scale somewhat well within a private data center setting, exponential growth will require major data center upgrades. This simply isn't a concern when your email is housed in a cloud environment. All of this responsibility is offloaded to the provider.
Whether you're migrating from a standard Exchange server, Gmail, IMAP, or a host of other popular mail platforms, most cloud email providers have you covered. Additionally, you often have the choice to migrate your email to a cloud platform yourself -- or let the provider handle everything. Your migration options are wide-ranging, and they conform to fit almost any enterprise need.
While only 13% of global enterprises today are using cloud email in some form, according to Gartner it's expected that this percentage will continue to rise. As IT decision-makers weigh the costs/benefits of replacing their aging in-house email system with one that's managed by a reputable provider, many will ultimately choose to outsource this responsibility. Doing so will give you the opportunity to redirect internal IT staff to addressing the important tech needs that help expand your company's business -- and its bottom line.
While only 13% of global enterprises today are using cloud email in some form, according to Gartner it's expected that this percentage will continue to rise. As IT decision-makers weigh the costs/benefits of replacing their aging in-house email system with one that's managed by a reputable provider, many will ultimately choose to outsource this responsibility. Doing so will give you the opportunity to redirect internal IT staff to addressing the important tech needs that help expand your company's business -- and its bottom line.
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