Companies are increasingly turning to email virtualization solutions - as security concerns dwindle.
According to new research conducted by Sendmail, 56 per cent of companies have already migrated their email systems to virtualized environments.
The Sendmail VMworld Survey also showed that the resulting migration to storage virtualization for email had led to improvements in efficiency - including speedier message delivery.
Moreover, 87 per cent of firms questioned claimed that their goals and expectations of email server virtualization had either been met or exceeded.
Security was still a concern for those who had decided against adopting email virtualization, but at 14 per cent it was less of an issue than potential performance and throughput reductions - which were a worry for 45 per cent of respondents.
Stephanie Nevin, Sendmail vice-president of marketing and business development, said: "While many companies are turning to virtualized solutions to cut messaging infrastructure costs and improve operations, they [can] struggle with achieving their messaging virtualization goals because often times the performance and security risks overshadow the potential benefits."
Recently, research by IDC Government Insights revealed that the complexity of virtualized threats was a growing concern as cloud computing becomes the norm.