From empowering your employees with business cloud applications to provisioning compute servers for developers, cloud computing offers a flexible means to access cutting-edge services and infrastructure for a fraction of the cost of traditional IT.
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There are a number of important and substantive benefits that organizations can realize from the use of hosted email, collaboration and related applications, including
The cost of hosted email systems are typically lower than for on-premise systems up to around 1,000 to 1,500 seats. For example, Osterman Research has developed a cost model that shows that the total three-year cost of deploying Microsoft Exchange for 100 users (using list prices for all infrastructure elements) is roughly $48 per seat per month, although the cost drops significantly and rapidly for larger deployments. However, there are a number of scenarios in which much larger enterprises can still experience lower costs from hosting, as well.
IT labor represents two-thirds of the total cost of ownership for an on-premise email system – labor focused on managing servers, patch management, dealing with user issues, and the like. The use of a hosted system requires almost no IT labor to manage. Typically, only an hour or two per week of a single IT staff person's time is required to manage the relationship with a hosted provider.
Another important benefit of hosted applications is that they can provide access to a common set of applications and tools across all platforms: desktop computers, laptop computers, mobile devices and home computers. This benefit of hosted applications is of growing importance given that workforces are becoming more mobile. For example, an Osterman Research survey conducted earlier in 2008 found that 74% of users check their work-related email from home on weekdays.
Improved collaboration tools fosters improved productivity because it permits faster decision-making, increased transparency and a universal platform that can be provided to remote workers wherever they are, allowing organizations to hire anyone, anywhere without the need for IT to support them.
However, collaborative applications include a variety of non-traditional capabilities, as well, such as video creation. Video can be useful for training in-house staff or clients, for senior managers to convey matters of corporate policy, to make presentations, and so forth. The popularity of video-sharing sites like YouTube attests to the value of video in conveying visual information.
The value of using a hosted offering is that storage requirements are offloaded. To illustrate with a single application, video, if video becomes popular in an organization very quickly, storage systems can be overwhelmed. Using an in-the-cloud video creation and storage solution can make costs and storage requirements much more predictable.
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Deploy Google Apps mail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and other web apps for your employees. It's all hosted by Google, saving your company the time, money and hassles of managing these IT solutions yourself.
Business email hosting with email, calendars, contacts, and more on your desktop
Hosted Exchange unlocks all of the features and functionality of Outlook®. They were made for each other.
Not every user needs Exchange. The Exchange Hybrid option mixes Microsoft Exchange hosting and Rackspace Email on the same domain and saves you money.
Cloud Drive facilitates secure collaboration, disaster recovery, and data access. Share and sync documents without the cost or maintenance of a file server. Schedule automatic file backups for easy restoration. Access your critical data anytime, anywhere.
Capture and index all of your organization's email and attachments in one centralized, searchable repository. Easily store, search, and locate messages without costly on-site or physical storage media .
Google's patented real-time, pass through architecture blocks email-borne threats - like spam and viruses - reducing downtime and on-site complexity. Protect your email from spam and viruses and set email policies to stay compliant .
A hosted continuity solution for your on-premise email server. Ensure rapid email failover in the event of a server outage with complete and constant email replication - all accessible at any time through Gmail. Ensure rapid email failover during on-premise server outages with full email replication .
Ensure legal and best practice compliance by encrypting messages containing sensitive information. Build customer and partner confidence and reduce financial and brand risks. Automatically encrypt email messages to manage regulatory compliance.
