Exoprise Systems Inc., which helps businesses to evaluate their cloud readiness, is taking a very close look at the Office 365 and Google Apps marketplaces. Among the key inflection points that Exoprise has been studying: Will legacy on-premise Exchange customers upgrade to on-premise Exchange 2010 — or will those customers move to Google Apps or Microsoft Office 365?
Back in April, more than 500 IT professionals participated in an Exoprise survey about cloud computing. Among the survey outcomes worth noting:
- 25 percent of survey participants say they are considering a move to a new email platform within the next 12 months. Another 26 percent say they may consider such a move.
- For those that are considering cloud-based email, the top anticipated benefits include (1) less management overhead (2) cost savings and (3) scalability and agility. However, one-third of survey participants are not convinced that the cloud offers cost benefits vs. on-premise e-mail. But the biggest lingering concern involves security.
- Only 17 percent of survey participants are extremely confident that cloud-based email can meet anticipated needs, though 41 percent of participants are somewhat confident that cloud-based email can meet anticipated needs.
- After email, the applications that survey participants will consider moving to the cloud include desktop applications, storage, content management, SharePoint, VoIP and complete VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure).
- Of the 517 survey participants, most currently run Exchange on-premise. Nearly 300 would consider Google Apps as a potential replacement, while roughly 225 would consider Office 365 as a replacement — though Office 365 didn’t debut until June 28 — roughly two months after the survey was conducted.
Making the Move
Armed with that survey data, Exoprise is helping customers to assess their on-premises applications, infrastructure and end-user readiness for cloud computing. Much of the effort involves CloudReady, a SaaS application suite that evaluates the readiness of on-premises systems and assists with cloud migrations. “Next up for us is the launch of our cloud monitoring solution, which
I’m really excited about,” said Jason Lieblich, CEO and founder of Exoprise. ” We’re introducing a new angle on cloud
performance monitoring that fills an important gap in the market. We’ll be saying more about that in the coming months.”
In the meantime, Lieblich says, Exoprise is getting “great traction” with Exchange assessments in state government organizations, higher education, and well-known consumer companies. He notes that Exoprise has also partnered up successfully with Daston Corp. and Cloud Sherpas.
Of course, it’s difficult to truly measure Exoprise’s momentum, since the company essentially is a privately held startup. Still, cloud email migration services are a hot commodity at the moment. Instead of getting up in price-per-user inbox wars, Exoprise seems focused on the more lucrative assessment, consulting and migration services.
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