Simply put, the cost of email is up to 70% less in the cloud.

Companies largely use Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Notes to run their on-premise email systems. When you consider the total cost of running an email system, you would have to consider several factors such as servers, storage, networking, security, energy, software licensing, software upgrades, and labor cost on administration and support.

All these costs add up to a significant number. Most CIOs would be surprised to see that this cost falls in the $25-$30 range per user per month (Forrester analysis, Jan 2009).

Also, with the increasing volume of emails and attachment sizes, the cost is increasing every year. This is compared to the typical subscription fee Google charges for hosting Google Apps in Cloud for businesses — $50 per user per year — which translates to about $4 per user per month. Read more