Intermedia published a survey that focused on E-mail to find out which applications are being migrated into Amazon Web Services Inc.’s (AWS) cloud.
The goal of the new survey — IaaS Outlook Managing and Migrating Business Applications in the Cloud — was “to better understand the migration of applications to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for those in or considering the AWS platform,” said Intermedia.
The company describes itself to be “a one-stop-shop for cloud business applications,” offering a Cloud software suite, Office in the Cloud, and a Dedicated Exchange in AWS email solution. Researchscape International was commissioned by the company to survey more 300 U.S. employees. IT managers in mid-sized companies (400 to 11,999 employees), that use or plan to use AWS were surveyed by Researchscape International. Intermedia announced the results of the survey at the AWS summit in Chicago.
Intermedia’s Carles Cabre wrote Monday that “the results were quite surprising — like how e-mail was at 32 percent the least frequently hosted application on IaaS.” “E-mail, however, ranks highest when it comes to apps that organizations intend to move to IaaS in future (32 percent, +6 Delta).
E-mail was the least likely to be hosted on AWS cloud. ERP (44%), file synchronization (40%) and server backup (38%). ERP was also tied to e-mail for AWS planned delivery, while CRM and file syncization ranked at bottom of this category.
Security was the most frequently cited challenge. Migrating email to the cloud was the number one challenge. Data migration was second. 2 slot.
According to the survey, “The concerns regarding migrating email to the cloud are very similar to concerns about migrating other applications in general.” The 39-page survey found that the majority of respondents said they were concerned about the migration of e-mails to the cloud. IT managers are concerned about security when migrating applications to the cloud. This is true regardless of the application type. Data migration is the No. Data migration is the number 2 concern overall, just like it is for email. However, the No. TCO (total cost of ownership) is the third general concern. TCO is a much lower concern for migrating email to the cloud (No. 6 vs. No. 3 overall).”
According to the survey, the increase in interest in moving e mail to the cloud was due to the evolution of IaaS offerings that allow for the resolution of the most frequently cited challenges. Intermedia stated that dedicated, single-tenant cloud deployments can overcome these challenges, which is what respondents were most interested in — and which the company also offers.
Survey respondents also preferred per-user pricing per month — which the company offers.
A majority of IT managers (59%) expressed confidence in their organization’s ability to manage its Exchange e-mail environment via AWS. However, they preferred working with a third-party like Intermedia and would prefer a single-tenant deployment using a per-user per month payment model — which is what the company offers.
