"For me e-mail is a highly commoditised and standardised functionality which does not require a lot of customisation for our business needs," he says. "I looked for a service allowing me to use and consume it, without the need to operate it."

"It's the Outlook, Lync and SharePoint integration that is attractive. We intend going from e-mail to a complete collaboration suite." SBS has been a long-time GroupWise customer and while admitting it is a vendor change, Schelp says it was a "pretty neutral decision".

"We are moving 1300 users off GroupWise which has been in use a long time. The decision was driven through the selection process including an extensive evaluation by different business users," he says, "The whole project will take a little more than six months including planning, proof of concept and implementation. We have opted for a condensed migration of three weeks including all mailboxes, archives and address books to minimise any business impact with users being on different systems. This is starting now and is on target."

Schelp says there has been nothing of concern with the migration project and with 25 gigabytes of storage per e-mail account, the Cloud solution is "significantly higher" than the organisation's current capability.

With SBS navigating its way to more Cloud services, including collaboration, Schelp says CIOs looking at total cost of ownership comparisons between Cloud and in-house infrastructure may find an equal footing. "On the bottom line the Cloud solution is comparable to current operational costs, but we are getting more functionality," he says.