Burton Group: Preparing the Enterprise for Shift to Cloud E-Mail

Burton Group, a research and consulting firm focused on in-depth analysis of enterprise information technologies, provides research guidance to Enterprises looking to move e-mail to the cloud.

Salt Lake City, UT (Vocus) June 8, 2009 -- Burton Group (http://www.burtongroup.com/), a research and consulting firm focused on in-depth analysis of enterprise information technologies, provides research guidance to Enterprises looking to move e-mail to the cloud.

The decision to deploy hosted e-mail is playing out in executive suites with top down pressure to bring enterprise messaging system cost down with more predictability and manageability. This pressure in the enterprise e-mail market is shaping up to be a monumental struggle for dominance over the software as a service (SaaS) marketplace by large, established vendors.

A high-stakes competitive SaaS e-mail market is emerging to offer enterprises cost-effective options for e-mail that can scale to support many users. Solutions from Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Yahoo! are addressing a spectrum of needs ranging from basic and low-cost e-mail to supporting sophisticated enterprise e-mail, calendaring, and meeting-scheduling features. These e-mail solutions are an opportunity for IT organizations to get away from the e-mail operations grind and focus their attention and money on higher-level applications that offer competitive advantage.

Homan Farahmand, Burton Group Director of Consulting said, "Hosting is not an either or scenario and therefore comes with many gray areas that aren't sufficiently addressed. Comparing offerings, whether it's hosted offerings or on-premise solutions, is difficult and depends on the individual needs of the enterprise. Hosting comes with new risks customers may not be accustomed to or willing to take on. Customers should decide on cloud-based offerings based on their unique needs, risk tolerance levels of the enterprise, and to take the right steps to ensure safe migrations with the least heartache."

Enterprise SaaS e-mail is an early sign of change coming to IT organizations that enable the challenges of deploying to cloud based platforms. Now is the time for enterprises to examine their e-mail needs and what they are presently spending on e-mail and identify the constraints of moving to SaaS offerings. As part of any evaluation, enterprises need to allocate time for both technical and vendor due diligence covering identity management, security, risk management, networking, and application development requirements that meet the business's technical needs. Burton Group's research on this topic is developed to assist enterprises in avoiding roadblocks and understand a hybrid or fully hosted email environment.

More information on shifting Enterprise e-mail to the cloud can be found in the Burton Group research document, "Software -as-a-Service Enterprise E-Mail: Get Ready to go Beyond the Grind (http://www.burtongroup.com/Guest/Ccs/GoBeyondtheGrind.aspx)" and a webcast with Homan Farahmand and Karen Hobert titled, "5 Things You Should Do Before Moving E-mail to the Cloud (http://www.brighttalk.com/webcasts/4248/attend)." Additional messaging coverage will be featured at Burton Group's Catalyst Conference (http://www.catalyst.burtongroup.com/na09/index.html) July 27-31 in San Diego and Burton Group workshops (http://www.burtongroup.com/Consulting/Engagements/HostedMessagingWorkshopEngagement.aspx).

About Burton Group

Burton Group (http://www.burtongroup.com/) helps technologists make smart enterprise architecture decisions in increasingly complex environments. Burton Group's research and advisory services focus on technical analysis of infrastructure technologies relating to security, identity management, web services, service-oriented architecture, collaboration, content management, data centers, and network and telecom.

Contact:

Collin Searle

PR Manager

801-304-8102

csearle@burtongroup.com

###