Ozzie: E-mail, collaboration will drive move to cloud

In a somewhat recent speech, software visionary and Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie gave his view on how corporations will migrate to the cloud:
"The best way for them to have more confidence in cloud computing is to take some applications that are more cloud-friendly -- such as e-mail and employee collaboration -- to the cloud, Ozzie said. This is why he sees Microsoft's Exchange and SharePoint software as the obvious first choices for cloud deployment. "

While he's right when saying that e-mail and collaboration are the most "cloud-friendly" from a functional perspective, these two applications (especially e-mail) are also the most mission critical in most corporations. In this regard, they may not be seen as the best candidates to "test" cloud computing's reliability.

Therefore, my guess is that large corporations will go halfway and move collaboration to the cloud, while keeping a hand on their much looked-after e-mail infrastructure.

If so, I guess they will need some technology to link the internal e-mail exchanges with the cloud-based team workspaces when e-mails relate to a project, what do you think?