or, the grass isn’t always greener.

The competition in the cloud email and collaboration space is really heating up this year. It used to be straight-forward, albeit expensive and time consuming, for a business that was contemplating their email and collaboration options.

Buy Microsoft Exchange.

Exchange has been virtually unchallenged in the email and collaboration space for years. Every end user knows outlook and loves the calendaring and contacts. Nobody does shared or company calendars and address books better than exchange and outlook.

The great thing about cloud computing is the choice and competition it provides. There are a number of email and collaboration options out there like Google’s GMail based Google Apps and Zoho. IBM and Cisco also have offerings.

If you’re looking at switching away from microsoft exchange in favor of a consumer focused solution like Google Apps or Zoho, you need to really understand the impact it will have on users that have become so accustomed to and efficient with outlook and exchange.

GMail is a fantastic personal or small workgroup solution, but can it really compete head on with exchange? Serena software tried and decided it couldn’t. The second page of the article has some great concrete examples of the work Google still has ahead of them in providing business services.

If you want the economic advantages of cloud computing without the pain, look at a hosted exchange option. If you want guaranteed security and reliability and feel like it’s behind your firewall get our AlwaysThere Hosted Exchange.