Email as a service

Bauer: SaaS-based email offers advantages to risk-averse firms

Despite the recession, investment in SaaS-based email has been on the increase and we have also found that customer churn rates can be low.

The legal sector has been leading the way in the adoption of SaaS email. Law firms have to be careful how they store and protect their data because of various recent regulations.

Many of these inherently risk-averse firms are entrusting critical email to SaaS providers with email archiving and e-discovery systems. Surely this speaks volumes about the reliability and robustness of the technology, especially considering the increasing compliance pressures.

Over the last three years, we have seen customer storage increase by almost double, with the average company now storing in excess of 70GB a year. We foresee this number doubling again in 2010 as more organisations begin to store their email data within a unified email management SaaS model.

We expect to see ongoing growth coming from customers that have implemented storage within a regulatory framework such as legal and finance, but also from other sectors such as accountancy firms.

Email is ingrained in the way we work now, so CIOs and exchange managers must optimise its effectiveness and help IT staff and employees get the most out of it.

Moving email management to the cloud is an attractive option, not just because storage is cheap but because maintaining, securing and providing a highly available email archive that is searchable in seconds isn’t easy.

This year, businesses will need to scrutinise email management and streamline their email infrastructure.

The media have got carried away with the hype around social media tools and the implications this will have on existing technologies. Ironically, it is actually social media that is driving email use. People use email as a central point from which they can manage their virtual lives.

Employees may also manage personal email and social media accounts centrally from their work email. Many customers will suffer from increased data volumes around email and will need to store that data.

If they do not, they could have problems backing up and archiving, which could cause them to incur a hefty fine. We can expect to see inboxes replacing file share more and more, marking the end of 50Mb limits on inboxes.

Companies can’t shut the door on social media because too many people use it for work as well as socially. IT needs to build policies that protect businesses against security threats to which social media exposes them, while allowing them to use social networking as a business tool.

We have seen the average number of emails sent and received per organisation double from 2008 to 2009. Being able to secure, store and access historical data without compromising your on-site email infrastructure is increasingly on everyone’s agenda.

Peter Bauer is chief executive officer of Mimecast