For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

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	January 5, 2009 (updated January 27, 2009) Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? An Infrastructure And Operations Analysis Rethinking Where Your Email Lives And Who's Managing It by Christopher Voce with Ted Schadler, Ben Echols, Sara Burnes

This is an excerpt

Executive Summary

There isn't much that hasn't already been said about the criticality of email in business today — but the cost of hosting and managing your own email infrastructure is probably reaching the breaking point. Google's $50-per-user annual fee has set a new floor in email pricing and is driving organizations to look inward at their situation and then outside at the hosted and cloud offerings. Companies are looking at upcoming email migrations, consolidations, and upgrades as times to potentially make a change. Before making a service architecture change, you should examine the needs of your different user constituencies, profile the applications that either integrate or work in concert with email, and understand the real costs of keeping email in your data center and running it yourself.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• On-Premise Email Is Giving IT Ops A Migraine
• The Service Architectures To Support Email Are Evolving
• Organizations Should Look To The Sky For Help
• Roll Up Your Sleeves — Your Users, Apps, And Costs Dictate The Best Approach

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Ready Your Organization To Take Advantage Of The Cloud

WHAT IT MEANS

• Email Could Open The Door To Broader Cloud Adoption

ALTERNATIVE VIEW

• Storage Trends Shift The Cost Equation For Microsoft Exchange Users
• Supplemental Material
• Related Research Documents

This is an excerpt