50% Of Exchange To Be Exchange Online?

Well ChrisCap’s comments on cloud computing have put the cat amongst the pigeons today with Nick Carr and other weighing in on this statement.

“In five years, 50 percent of our Exchange mailboxes will be Exchange Online"

a pretty big statement when you look at the size of the Exchange business, but this kind of stuff starts to tell more of the Software plus Services story and makes people ask questions.

Some people will translate that to mean 50% of our existing Exchange customers will ditch their in house servers and move online. Mary Jo suggests that 50% will come from these on-premise to hosted switchers. That’s only half the story I think….as Chris said, he expects a portion of those Exchange Online customers to come from Lotus Domino switchers. Then lets add this statement from Radicati - they expect Exchange will run about 210 million corporate e-mail accounts in 2008, growing to 319 million mailboxes in 2012.

That last part holds a clue to where a lot of the 50% lies – growth, not switchers. That’s a big deal for partners too. Much of the press would have you believe that Microsoft Online will be a competitor to what partners sell today with on premise Exchange (or SBS). The more I speak with partners the more they see it adds another element of choice to their kitbag. In doing so, it opens up a whole new set of customers they may previously have ignored due to a high cost of sale. With Online they’ll now have a utility choice to offer customers.