Web-hosted email use is on the rise among businesses and will continue to grow in popularity for the foreseeable future, according to Gartner, with 10 per cent of businesses tipped to subscribe to hosted email services by 2014.

By that time, the research firm said, hosted email will have reached a "tipping point" in the marketplace in terms of widespread adoption. For the time being, however, Gartner fellow and vice president, Tom Austin, said businesses should take precautions when considering the cloud email and collaboration services (CECS).

"Ultimately, we expect CECS to become the dominant provisioning model for the next generation of communication and collaboration technologies used in enterprises," he said in a press statement. "However, it is not dominant today, it will not be the only model, and it will take a decade or more for the transition to play out."

Originally, Gartner expected CECS to pass the 10 per cent marker by the end of 2012, but observed a bit of slowing among businesses, for which they identified several reasons.

"There are several reasons why enterprises might not want to be ahead of the curve on CECS, not least the perception that early adopters pay a premium in terms of acquisition cost, and that by waiting the organization can avoid paying an 'early adopter premium'," Austin said.

"However, cloud-based collaboration services appear to be forward priced and, while we do expect the cost of CECS to follow a cost-learning curve, the motive for much of the investment in CECS appears to be cost reduction."

Written by Jason Morton
 

Research finds more businesses using hosted email