Cloud Email: Cutting Edge Communications

Business communication is constantly evolving. From the handwritten letter to the typed one and then to telegrams and now the internet, things have come a long way. And while the internet has been the standard for business communications for many years, this too has evolved. Today cloud email is the new buzzword and unlike many other innovations, it offers a host of advantages over traditional email solutions. Small and medium businesses are among those that will benefit most from cloud email solutions. The advantages for these categories of users are manifold.

Cloud Email Benefits

1. The cost of cloud email is significantly lower for the user. Instead of the large capital expense on hardware and space to locate it, cloud email offers usage based monthly payments with no initial investment. With on premises solutions the total cost of ownership increases over time and is unpredictable. Increased storage requirements mean larger capacity servers, more maintenance costs, more administrative staff and the stocking of spare parts. Software licensing fees also continue to grow. In the case of cloud email, all the overhead is covered by the monthly fee and increased storage space on the cloud servers can be bought as and when required at a fraction of the cost of a user buying its own hardware.
2. The cost of enterprise class infrastructure is large and beyond the reach of small and medium businesses which means they often make do with less than the best. Cloud email shares the cost among multiple users so top of the line infrastructure, including the best high speed servers, 99.9% availability, redundancies, disaster recovery and other enterprise class features are within the financial reach of smaller businesses.
3. Deployment time is reduced from weeks to days because there is no hardware and support to be installed on the user premises. This also means that maintenance and repair, with their associated costs, are no longer the user's responsibility. The cloud email service provider will be responsible for ensuring continuity of service and in a competitive market no service provider can afford to let standards slip. If problems should occur, most cloud emails services offer 24x7 helpdesk availability and support. In case a user is dissatisfied with a service provider, a change to another can be done quickly and at little cost.
4. With evolving technology, upgrading of both hardware and software is often called for, resulting in both costs and disruption of service. With cloud email upgrading is the responsibility of the service provider and the costs are built in to the usage charges. And with intense competition, no service provider can afford to use outdated technology. Also the built in redundancies and 24x7 operation means that upgrades can be done at low usage times to minimize disruptions.
5. Spam and anti-virus protection is a continuous problem. With cloud email the service provider will offer high levels of protection which the on premises email user would find expensive and unwieldy to manage itself. Built in firewalls in the cloud email environment also increase data security and protection from hacking.

Reduced Costs - Increased Efficiency

Cloud email offers small and medium businesses the advantages of state of the art email without the costs of having an on premises solution.