To persuade companies to have do their email hosting externally, GMail is playing the green card: showing that they do it much more efficiently than companies do individually. The example:
The claim is not small: almost 80 times (pdf) more efficient than in-house email. Email hosting services like corporate email might be an attractive option, but there are some pitfalls. What about things like backups, security, maintenance and such? The platform as such might be ‘out of your hands’, but if the service goes down you are dependant on an external company.
Next to that there’s the factor of the internet connection: when a company’s internet connection goes down, internal email will still function. The outside world can still contact them by phone. However when email is hosted in the cloud, not even internal email will be working, making companies lose money on inefficiency and lost hours.
Even so, I think it’s a good thing Google is promoting this: for several companies it will be great to lose the hassle and energy bills of managing their own corporate email services.
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