Some interesting analysis from the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando last week.  Gartner expects 20% of corporate email seats to be either SaaS- or cloud-based by 2012.

The transition is well under way and is led naturally by smaller organizations, but larger enterprises are following.  The decision to move email into the cloud is mainly based on the promise of 50% savings.

Gartner analysts Matt Cain and James Lundy presented a number of charts intended to help with the decision process.

Comparison of On Premise vs. Cloud Email:

Comparison of On Premise vs. Cloud Email

Decision Criteria for On Premise vs. Cloud Email

Decision Criteria for On Premise vs. Cloud Email

Even if you decide to move email into the cloud, there are many vendors to choose from including the very big ones such as Google, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco. Some of the larger enterprises will need to consider hybrid models to deal with app integration and compliance issues and only host some of their workforce off premises. Yet another reason to carefully evaluate the trade-offs and cloud vendor of choice before proceeding.