Online business Toolkit

Gartner: Hosted email to boost cloud-services uptake

Published: 04 Jul 2008 09:04 BST

The use of internet-hosted email services, such as Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail, will fuel the business uptake of 'cloud services', according to Gartner.

The analyst house has said IT applications provided over the internet will be boosted by the widespread use of this kind of email.

Currently one percent of commercial mailboxes use this kind of system, but Gartner predicted this figure will rise to 20 percent by 2012.

This increase will be driven by falling prices and large vendors coming into the email market.

Matthew Cain, a research vice president at Gartner, said the past few years have created the environment for cloud-based technology, with big players, such as Dell, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, all investing in it.

With the consumer mail platforms serving millions of users, Cain said there is a clear opportunity to transfer these economies of scale to enterprises.

He added that small businesses, those undergoing email transitions, and those with complex geographic topologies could all benefit from cloud email services.

Credit: Email: The tip of the cloud iceberg? from silicon.com