It’s a question many IT leaders are asking themselves. So we conducted a survey last week to see what people think. Incredible, 517 people filled it out – in two days. We’re happy to make the results available – you can access the summary report via the form to the right.

There’s an entire generation’s worth of experience, comfort and investment in on-premises Exchange applications and infrastructure. Anyone over 40 (alas, I must now include myself in this category) literally grew up on Microsoft and many are loyal to the tried and true tools of business (Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, etc.)

But, as we know, the cloud is changing everything. Organizations of all sizes are taking a look at their IT spend and strategy and contemplating if they can do better. Lots of Exchange 2003 and 2007 servers out there due for an upgrade in the near future. Will these organizations “Go Google”?

This battle for enterprise messaging is going to get even hotter, and more dynamic, when Office 365 goes GA this summer. Will Microsoft’s somewhat late to the game cloud-play be good enough to defend their position as king of the hill in business? Will Google be forced to innovate even faster?

Lots of questions that will be answered in time. But we wanted to know what people think today about Gmail and Exchange, about the viability of a cloud-based alternative to on-premises e-mail, about the reasons for (and against) moving to the cloud. So we asked.

517 IT professionals from all walks of life (corporate, education, government) contributed to our survey last week – in one day! I’m sure some were motivated by the free Amazon kindle raffle incentive, but not all 180. Responses give a good feel for how confident people are about the cloud, which applications they’re considering moving, and how they feel about the Google vs Microsoft battle.

We hope you find the results as interesting as we do!