"Another driver is speed of deployment. An on-premise deployment for us would have taken up more resources and time as it would have required a completely new environment and technology. I did not want to work through a lengthy process in stage one to replace basic e-mail functionality." Access speed to the Cloud environment is something CIOs need to watch for, according to Schelp, in addition to standard security considerations.

"Readiness of the local infrastructure for a Cloud-based solution is something CIOs need to look out for," he says. "Security is also something that definitely needs to be considered. There is no black and white answer and it requires a business specific assessment.

"CIOs need to apply standard project management and change management processes, but will spend less time on technology considerations."

The next step for SBS is to make use of Microsoft Lync features like presence, instant messaging and unified communications and the long-term roadmap is to use more SharePoint and collaboration functionality, including online documents.

"The extent of possible future voice integration is still to be defined," Schelp says. "Considering it's a hybrid solution I could quite easily change from the Cloud to on-premise and vice versa, transparent to the user. The products used are identical and the functionality provided from a user point of view would be unchanged."