Strong Growth Ahead for Hosted E-Mail Functions, Survey Finds
Results of survey from Sendmail and Osterman Research show more than 40 percent of organizations outsource part of their e-mail infrastructure using hosted or SaaS model
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Sendmail, Inc. and Osterman Research announced industry survey results from an early November Webcast on how businesses are reacting to e-mail infrastructure being migrated to the cloud.
In the Webcast, Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, and Greg Olsen, director business development at Sendmail, Inc., revealed data results from two recent studies conducted by Osterman Research. Both studies underscored that “security dominates the SaaS market today.” The speakers elaborated on the functions most likely be outsourced in the future, noting that basic e-mail security functions such as anti-spam, bulk e-mail, anti-virus, and anti-malware top the list.
“As organizations consider their approach to managing their e-mail infrastructure, the key is for them to have a clear understanding of what functions should be managed in the cloud and why,” said Osterman. “Our study reveals that the reasons more companies are not outsourcing vary from privacy concerns, concerns about retrieving data once it’s outsourced, concerns about regulatory compliance issues and because they believe they would lose control of their capabilities. Contrary to what some believe, moving commoditized services to the cloud provides enterprises with more choice, agility, control and protection -- which is why more than 20 percent of users surveyed are outsourcing some of their e-mail functions to a SaaS solution. In two years, we foresee that number will grow to 38 percent.”
In the study of 101 respondents conducted in October, the study found that 40 percent of companies surveyed are outsourcing some part of their e-mail infrastructure; anti-spam (64 percent) and bulk e-mail (46 percent) are being outsourced by most companies. In today's environment, 20 percent of users are served by a SaaS solution and 22 percent of e-mail servers run as virtual servers. Respondents expect that in two years 38 percent of them will be served by a SaaS solution and 49 percent of e-mail servers will run as virtual server.
“The survey results clearly indicate that more companies are outsourcing their e-mail filtering functions using a hosted or SaaS model and there is continued growth toward using virtualization and blade servers within enterprise messaging infrastructures,” said Olsen. “Our customers’ purchasing behavior confirms that these trends are on the up-tick, as we are seeing a mix of deployment options with our Sentrion Message Processor product family, including the Sentrion MPV virtual appliance, the Sentrion MPQ blade server and the Sentrion Cloud Services SaaS option.”