Planning to move your company’s email to the cloud? You’re not alone. Gartner recently reported that by 2020 there will be a $1 trillion dollar shift in IT spending towards the cloud. Gartner also reports that 13% of publicly listed companies use either Office 365 or Google Apps for Work email. Of that seemingly small percentage of overall enterprise email usage, 65% use Office 365, leaving just 36% for Gmail. The remaining 87% of the companies included in Gartner’s sample use an on-premise, hybrid, hosted or private cloud email setup.
Most arguments against moving to the cloud are quickly losing credibility. You may feel more secure having your server locked away in the closet next to your office, but wouldn’t it be more secure stored at an unknown location managed by an expert, who is thoroughly invested in its security and maintenance? GWAVA manages its own cloud with an undisclosed location and limited access to very few people who go through important security measures just to access the servers. Measures to protect against floods, power shortages, and other disasters have been taken. Other cloud providers also take similar steps to ensure the security of their cloud. Just take a look at Amazon Web Service’s insane security measures! With all the money and resources that cloud providers pool into their databases, you can feel confident that data will be more than safe when stored there.
Justifying the cost of cloud is simple. Organizations often don’t consider the expenses of on premises storage. The Cloud saves you from having to worry about IT resources, power, heating, cooling, backup & media, disaster recovery, implementation, and storage, just to name a few. It will save you time, money, and effort both up front and in the long run. You can reduce maintenance and upkeep from your crowded to-do list, as this can all be managed in the cloud. All of this considered, it is actually harder to justify the cost of on-prem storage.
This all sounds great, but what about functionality? Once again, no problem for cloud computing. Many providers (GWAVA included) offer data redundancy and failover features that ensure that you will have your data when you need it. When one server goes down, another can pick right back up where it left off. AWS, for example, offers 99.9% uptime on its cloud storage. Today’s cloud is extremely functional, and is always improving.
Making the move
The cloud has many benefits. Word processing, spreadsheet, and document apps can all be easily managed there. This allows for enhanced collaboration and accessibility. Instead of having to send files, edit them, and re-send them, all of this work can be done in the cloud in real time. Multiple employees can work simultaneously on one project. The enhanced collaboration and accessibility will save you time and money.
Another major component of this trillion dollar shift in spending towards the cloud is cloud based email services like Office 365 and Gmail. They provide a secure home for your company’s email and save you the headache of maintaining an on-prem server.
Some benefits of cloud-based email include:
- No server maintenance
- Easier disaster recovery
- Accessibility
- Collaboration
Retain Cloud Email Archiving
Here at GWAVA, we are also part of the shift towards the cloud. While some email platforms have some built in archiving and security, both Gmail and Office 365 lack key features that make third party solutions essential. Missing features include mobile support, web searches, accessibility and e-discovery, just to name a few. The built in archiving and security is a nice thought, but in order to be truly protected, outside help is needed from specialists in archiving and security.
GWAVA is well known as a specialist in unified archiving and security. The Retain Unified Archive is highly functional in the cloud, and has all the necessary features that your organization needs to archive email for Office 365, Exchange, Gmail, and Groupwise. It also archives mobile text messages for Android, iOS and BlackBerry, and also can capture, monitor andarchive social media posts for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vimeo, Flickr, Pinterest, and Google+ (on and off network).
If you are already actively archiving your data on-prem and wish to migrate to the cloud, GWAVA will create an implementation schedule to securely migrate all your data, configure all settings and protocols, and train you on search and publishing from the cloud. For new customers, configuring Retain in the cloud is a breeze. Simply provide us with the necessary information and we will get it up and running for you. Keeping your Retain Archive in the cloud will be a huge advantage to you because it will reduce your maintenance costs, protect your bandwidth, and free up resources for your strategic business initiatives. Our message security solution provides antivirus, anti-spam, zero-hour malware, and threat protection before messages even enter your system. GWAVA takes your current security configurations, points the system to your domains and in a snap, filters your messages in the cloud.
With these two solutions implemented, you can rest assured that all of your archiving and security needs are being expertly handled in the cloud.
Don’t get left on the ground while the majority of businesses are moving towards the cloud. Join the movement and benefit from the increased security, cost savings, and other advantages that the cloud can offer you!
