Email is driving enterprises to the cloud in droves, and according to a recent harmon.ie survey, cost savings on email storage and maintenance are the number one reason. In fact, while industry pundits predicted email's looming demise in favor of other social tools just a year or two ago, the cloud is now giving email a new breath of life. A 2015 Email Statistics Report from Radicati, the technology research firm that has published definitive email statistics for more than 20 years, revealed that the number of worldwide email users is expected to increase from 2.6 billion today to 2.9 billion by 2019, and that the average business user will receive 96 emails per day by 2019.

While email will continue to play a crucial role in the modern enterprise for decades to come, turning email from a source of distraction into a center for business productivity requires a new playbook. In 2012, consulting firm McKinsey discovered that reading and answering emails constituted 28 percent of an employee's weekly work tasks – this percentage has only increased in the absence of widespread behavioral and technological advances for reducing email overload.

In this slideshow, David Lavenda, vice president of product strategy at harmon.ie and information overload researcher, walks readers through the immediate and future steps enterprises must take to end email overload and embrace email as the center of business connectivity in a cloud environment.