GFI SOFTWARE: SMB COMPANIES STILL PREFER ON-PREMISE MAIL SERVERS

Top 5 barriers to deploying email in the cloud

PRAGUE, September 22, 2021 – GFI Software, a provider of security and management solutions for enterprise networks, said that in many cases organisations prefer on-premise mail servers to cloud-based options. Despite the general trend of migrating toward IT-as-a-service delivery, SMBs in particular find the in-house mail infrastructure option preferable in many situations.

Although one of the main drivers of the general migration to cloud services is more efficient management and cost, this is not so clear-cut in the case of email. Especially for smaller companies, for example, migrating to Microsoft 365 can be more costly overall than an in-house solution. And when you add in complications during the migration process and potential operational downtime, these companies are often not happy with the outcome of the cloud migration.

What are the barriers behind choosing corporate mail in an on-premise deployment:

1. Higher overall cost – The average cost of a mailbox for Microsoft 365 decreases as the total number of mailboxes increases, which is not advantageous for SMBs with multiple mailboxes. So, along with other costs, recurring fees can soon exceed the total cost of the system itself.
2. Limited control over the infrastructure – Cloud infrastructure is inherently multitenant, which makes it impossible for the provider to give the client full control over the environment they share with other clients for security reasons. Thus, the client cannot configure mail according to its needs.
3. Inflexible scaling – In a multitenant environment, if one client spikes its mail activity, the others are left with less and cannot scale up whenever they need it.
4. Standards compliance issue – In a cloud environment, there tends to be an issue with in-country data storage requirements, access to event logs, and meeting some GDPR regulations.
5. Migration concerns – Many smaller organizations are concerned about migrating to the cloud, which can be complicated by unsupported software, multiple domains being transferred, security issues, and the additional cost of migration tools.

“A smaller or medium-sized company with a normal level of email operations and optimal performance and security settings will often evaluate that there is no need to migrate their mail system to the cloud at any cost,” Zdeněk Bínek, responsible for sales of GFI Software solutions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. “As with any technology, the cloud has its advantages and disadvantages, and there will always be organizations for which an in-house mail system will be more advantageous than a cloud-based one in a given situation.”

As part of its GFI Unlimited licensing program, GFI Software offers the award-winning Kerio Connect, GFI MailEssentials and GFI Archiver solutions to cover the complex needs of corporate email in on-premise deployments.