Sendmail, Inc., the leading provider of reliable and secure email and messaging infrastructures, with Osterman Research, announced industry survey results from a recently hosted webcast on how businesses are reacting to email infrastructure being migrated to the cloud.

The webcast, which took place on November 5, featured Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, and Greg Olsen, director business development, Sendmail, Inc., who revealed data results from two recent studies, conducted by Osterman Research. Both studies underscored the idea that “security dominates the SaaS market today.” During the webcast, the speakers elaborated on what functions will most likely be outsourced in the future, noting basic email security functions such as, anti-spam, bulk email, anti-virus, and anti-malware as the most likely candidates.

“As organizations consider their approach to managing their email infrastructure, the key is for them to have a clear understanding of what functions should be managed in the cloud and why,” said Osterman. “Our study reveals that the reasons more companies are not outsourcing vary from privacy concerns, concerns about retrieving data once it’s outsourced, concerns about regulatory compliance issues and because they believe they would lose control of their capabilities. Contrary to what some believe, moving commoditized services to the cloud provides enterprises with more choice, agility, control and protection – which is why more than 20 percent of users surveyed are outsourcing some of their email functions to a SaaS solution. In two years, we foresee that number will grow to 38 percent.”

Study Highlights

• 101 surveys completed in October 2009
• 40% of companies surveyed are outsourcing some part of their email infrastructure
• Anti-spam (64%) and bulk email (46%) are being outsourced by most companies
• Today:
  • 20% of users are served by a SaaS solution
  • 22% of email servers run as virtual servers
• In two years:
  • 38% of users will be served by a SaaS solution
  • 49% of email servers will run as virtual server

A recorded version of the Webinar, including more highlights and results, is available here: http://marketing.sendmail.com/CloudServices_Nov09Recording.html

“The survey results clearly indicate that more companies are outsourcing their email filtering functions using a hosted or SaaS model and there is continued growth toward using virtualization and blade servers within enterprise messaging infrastructures,” said Olsen. “Our customers’ purchasing behavior confirms that these trends are on the up-tick, as we are seeing a mix of deployment options with our Sentrion Message Processor product family, including the Sentrion MPV virtual appliance, the Sentrion MPQ blade server and the Sentrion Cloud Services SaaS option.”