Hosted Exchange - An Opportunity For Companies To Get Ahead Of The Curve

‘Cloud computing’ and ‘social media’ are keywords that are getting more and more exposure in the Internet world. Nowadays, IT managers are faced with considering these trends and have to evaluate the integration of such concepts with their corporate IT system. We are not going to talk about the social media side since this can trigger a long debate that hasn’t necessarily found one definitive option that should be adopted.

Let’s focus on the integration of cloud computing into the corporate IT system.

According to a recent EDJ group survey titled “eDiscovery and the cloud”, conducted in November and December of 2011, 19.8% of corporations are currently working on a plan to integrate the cloud into their IT systems. Now, this may not seem a huge percentage, but that 19.8% have understood the huge opportunity that cloud computing brings when it comes to getting ahead of their competition.

Of course, companies can also take on a status quo strategy when it comes to adopting cloud computing but since there’s little to none ‘barrier to entry’ when adopting one solution, there’s a high risk that the companies who adopt that approach would find themselves lagging far behind and get burned. Indeed, a Hosted Exchange solution (which is a typical cloud based email solution for businesses to adopt) would only cost the company a low monthly fee per mailbox. Based on some of the extremely low costs that this plan can be adopted for, it’s no wonder that 19.8% are setting up a plan for integrating cloud in their IT system.

But there’s more to cloud computing than price. And if you take some time to scour the web looking for articles and studies, you’ll find out that price isn’t necessarily the driving vector for cloud adoption. Let’s take a Hosted Exchange solution to illustrate the point.

Corporations adopt the cloud due to its flexibility. By going for a per-user, per-month contract that can be modified every month, cloud computing gives the client the needed flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing IT requirements of the company. If the company’s competition is still using a in-house e-mail and collaboration system, then those competitors would have to invest into a three year contract (including capital expenses, as well as maintenance fees), while a Hosted-Exchange client would only have to worry about the number of users he would need at any point in time. This is a huge difference and would definitely give a competitive advantage to the company who opted for a Hosted Exchange solution.

Let’s take another option: with social media and mobile being adopted on a very large scale, chances are that the company’s users are putting pressure on IT managers to make the e-mail system compatible with their mobile devices. Had the company gone for a in-house e-mail system, positively answering to that user’s request would need additional investment so as to integrate the mobile feature to the current system. Now, if the company were to choose a Hosted Exchange (Cloud based) solution, this wouldn’t be an issue at all and wouldn’t bring any additional cost. In fact, as unbelievable as it may seem (at least from the point of view of the in-house e-mail system manager), a Hosted Exchange solution comes with rich features by default, including mobile support. And best of all, it doesn’t come with a “maintenance contract” as it is common practice with in-house IT systems, since the monthly mailbox cost should already include this.

By: Nick J Davies

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Hosted Exchange 2010 is a business grade, cloud-based email service available from Giacom World Networks. Share email, calendars, contacts and tasks with Hosted Exchange.