Your comments on the benefits are true. Personally I think the jury is out on lower prices as a wholesale benefit. Cost depends on so much more than mailbox services. Still a firm can be very creative with adopting a hybrid on-site and SaaS delivery model. Not only can a firm get creative about costs by segmenting users based on roles or segmenting services, but SaaS can help with piloting, extranets, mergers & acquisitions, and on-boarding new tools.

There’s still plenty of ground yet to be covered. If the hybrid model is what most enterprises and SMBs are eventually going to end up doing, then the providers need to have better ways of allowing customers to move from one delivery model to another. Cause you know that’s what they will want to do! On the customer side, it’s about preparedness. Many organizations are not “IT ready” to go hybrid, let alone move entirely to the cloud. Network, directory, compliance policies, desktop (e.g., browsers), and risk all play into a move to or adoption of cloud services, especially for e-mail.

For me, I agree that SaaS e-mail hosting is not the be all and end all solution for everybody, but the lower prices and the benefits would be a compelling reason to switch.