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Cloud email survey – and the results are in!

Thursday, September 15, 2011 by

You may remember back in July we carried out an online survey into the experiences and perceptions of organisations into cloud email. I’m pleased to announce that we have just published the results from the survey, in our new Market Insight report Perceptions and reality: the truths of cloud email. 56 organisations took part, almost half of whom had already deployed cloud email, and this gave us the opportunity to compare the “before” and “after” of this growing trend, to identify the myths associated with moving email to the cloud, and see what potential adopters should really be worrying about.

Here are some of the key findings from the report:

  • Reduced licence costs are a “red herring”. Despite the promise of reduced licence costs being a major driver for the majority of organisations we surveyed, only half of those who had already switched to cloud email reported that they had achieved reduced licence costs; 15% of respondents reported no cost reduction at all.
  • Concerns about availability and reliability are overstated. Over 55% of those respondents who had not yet made the switch cited availability and reliability as a primary concern, while in reality only 7% of early adopters found this was an issue in practice.
  • Organisations tend to underestimate integration issues. With all the focus on availability, privacy and security, only a minority of organisations are considering the issue of integrating cloud email with their existing systems, and yet this is the cost commonly cited issue among those who had already moved to cloud email.

Do these results correlate with your experience? I’d be interested to hear your views, so don’t be shy!

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2 Responses to Cloud email survey – and the results are in!

  1. Justin Pirie says:
    September 17, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    I completely agree with you Angela and that’s very similar to what we’re seeing in the market.

    Reduced license costs are indeed a “red herring”. Most people are swapping out license costs for service fees- BUT you pay for much less shelfware and in the Cloud world, if it doesn’t work you can leave. So software will be cheaper to acquire in the long run- just don’t use reduced licensing costs as a justification because…

    Security + Availability + Reliability will always beat costs as a justification for not doing it. Cloud needs to be bought based primarily on the agility it brings, despite the fact that adopters find it is as available and mostly more available than the on-premise systems it’s replacing. 57% of people we surveyed last year said that Cloud had actually improved their security: http://mim.ec/nG6FCH

    In terms of integration- often organisations don’t know what’s integrated within email systems, so when they go and rip and replace email, it breaks a number of business processes… There are alternatives however- if you choose your system and supplier carefully you can avoid these headaches with a hybrid approach.

    • Angela Ashenden says:
      September 20, 2011 at 10:41 am

      Thanks Justin. Your point about people not knowing what’s integrated with email is well made – and indeed it’s because email is so embedded that sometimes it’s hard to tell where email ends and other systems begin. But that’s absolutely something that cloud email vendors must be prepared for, as clearly it’s a major hurdle during the migration process.

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