Nov

Corporate Email in the Cloud

Moving email in the cloud is one of the most crucial tasks businesses need to think about. Since, cloud computing services are new to most of the businesses, its necessary for them to understand the term “cloud computing”, services and its benefits to compete with their rivals using cloud services.

Often people describe the term “cloud computing” in many different ways. In simple words, cloud is a computing model which offers applications, software’s, storage and resources over a network (typically the Internet). Comparing virtualization and cloud, you will find that cloud expects world without barriers. It offers various benefits to all sized businesses, despite these facts businesses still have high concerns in regards to the security and privacy of data as well as the possible unavailability of the services offered by the providers that prevents access to the data.

In the market, there are four deployment models of cloud available that are private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud & community cloud. Each have its own characteristics and applicable to a different requirements.

Basically, a private cloud is used by an organization that requires more security and privacy. The organization has to bear the costs of control, support and building the private cloud infrastructure in their organization.

Public cloud is an ideal solution for SMBs, as it is cost-effective and most of the services and web-based applications rely on it such as voicemail, free email services, free social networks, and more.

The hybrid cloud is a model where the organization can make use of both private and public as per their requirements. Whereas, the community cloud is a deployment model which contains a number of companies that are known to each other and shares the cost of the infrastructure. The community is quite common in some market, where companies are of same group.

Market Share of Cloud Computing Technology

The cloud computing based cloud hosting services are considered as the best IT solutions of the 21st Century. In order to save green, reduce energy consumption, carbon emission, and to minimize the investments on the IT resources, most of the U.S. companies are are planning to adopt the cloud-based services. It is revealed from the study by Carbon Disclosure Project that the adoption rate will accelerate from 10% to 69% by 2020. It is also clear that Latin America is leading the adoption of cloud computing.

Despite the benefits, all the legal aspects like risks posed by cloud technology and the country where the data will be stored must be taken into account before implementing the cloud services.

One of the important reason for moving email in the cloud environment is the notable efficiency attained by this computational model. Many of the corporations doesn’t have users in hundreds and thousands nowadays. However, a cloud service provider has an ability to offer these services to millions of users at cost-effective rates. Furthermore, due to limited budgets it is common to have limited internal email storage, however, an email in the cloud doesn’t have such limits. Since, the cost is minimal and is determined per usage, even small and medium companies can afford greater storage capacity in much lower costs.

However, when it comes to migration of your corporate emails in the cloud, you need to be more careful as most of the businesses depends on their data, be it emails or any other kind of data. Considering the legal aspects, the cloud model which you are going to implement must be in legal compliance, adhering to the rules of the country where your data would be stored by the provider. The territorial issue is much much more important as you can easily take required actions against the company in an event of data loss.

Therefore, it is vital to give attention towards the small print of “Terms & Conditions” and “Service Level Agreement” before deciding to opt for the email in the cloud solution. Also, its customers responsibility to make sure that the cloud provider offers everything required and provide necessary guarantees and systems for security control. When moving email in the cloud various things like hidden costs, legal issues, security aspects must be considered and ensure that all the legal aspects are included in the terms and agreement print.

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