Three quarters of UK businesses are looking to upgrade their email systems in the short-term, according to new research from Mimecast

12 October 2011; London – The UK is on the verge of a mass data migration, as over three quarters of IT managers (77 percent) plan to upgrade their email systems in the next two years, according to research released today from Mimecast, the leading supplier of cloud-based services for email. With the average mid-sized British business predicted to migrate over 100GB of data from one email system to another, the move will see approximately 6.36 petabytes of data – the equivalent of 127.2 million four-drawer filing cabinets of text – transported from one location to another in the next 12-18 months.

The Great Email Migration Report – which surveyed 500 IT/email system decision makers on their attitudes to, and plans for, email migration – found that over half (57 percent) of companies planned to make their migration in the next year.

With exceeding storage limits cited as the most common (58 percent) email problem experienced by organisations, the ever-increasing amount of data generated by businesses appears to be a key factor driving the IT agenda when it comes to purchasing decisions. Time-consuming administration (47 percent) and uptime maintenance (42 percent) also ranked high on the list of most pressing email problems. What’s more, recent figures from Gartner showed that 86 percent of Microsoft Exchange users were currently on version 2007 or older, indicating that upcoming renewal cycles and required upgrades would also have a part to play in driving migration.

However, the need to migrate to new systems appears to present IT managers with something of a quandary, with 77 percent believing it is important to keep up with industry email standards, but 58 percent hesitant to make any changes to email that might impact its performance.

“Email is the cornerstone of modern business communications and a critical part of the day-to-day workings of organisations of all types and sizes. Keeping it current and disruption-free is high on both business and IT priority lists,” said Alan Kenny, General Manager UK & Ireland, Mimecast. “The exponential increases in the volume of data being produced, alongside changes in systems and support on offer make the need for migration to more robust email systems a matter of when, rather than if.”

While potential data loss (52 percent), concerns about email downtime (44 percent) and managing the sheer volume of data (41 percent) are key concerns around managing email migration, cost concerns are rare, with the majority (73 percent) of companies expecting to recoup the initial investment within a year. Investment of time appears to be a more pressing concern with nearly half (48 percent) of companies not expecting the transition process to be completed within a day – one in 10 (nine percent) think the process will take a week or more.

“While there is a perception that migration must be time-intensive and expensive, the fact is that, with the right support, migration can be managed in a cost and time effective manner, ensuring that businesses can transition to more efficient, streamlined systems in much less time than they think,” explained Kenny.

Of those IT managers planning to upgrade in the next 12 months, 62 percent are planning to move to Microsoft Exchange 2010 on premise, whilst 21 percent are opting for hosted Microsoft Exchange. The key reasons for this choice were to take advantage of the new platform’s new features (57 percent) as well as being part of a general server estate upgrade (57 percent). While there was no one killer benefit of Exchange singled out, easier administration (50 percent), improved security (49 percent) and support for larger mailboxes (49 percent) were most frequently mentioned.

For more information on the Great Email Migration Report, click here (http://www.mimecast.com/migrationresearch) to download the full report.