Good and realistic view on the email market and its players …
… Well-made and highly popular, if Microsoft Exchange were a TV show, it would undoubtedly be Friends, and Exchange Server 2007 would be an episode called “The One That Got the Biggest Market Share.” The Redmond giant’s latest iteration of its e-mail platform is expected to win a great many customers — mainly at the expense of IBM’s Domino and Novell’s GroupWise. The catch, however, is that future versions of Exchange are unlikely to be as successful.
That’s certainly the opinion of Matt Cain, lead e-mail analyst at Gartner. “We forecast that Microsoft will get 70 percent of the commercial e-mail market by 2010. That will be the high point, and Microsoft’s market share will decline after that,” he said.
Who will be taking market share away from Microsoft at the end of the decade? Not IBM or Novell, Cain believes. Serious competition is more likely to come from new vendors (such as Zimbra) whose current offerings will be mature enough in three years to be viable alternatives to Exchange for many organizations.
Competition will come from another source as well. “The biggest threat to the Microsoft Exchange franchise will be software as a service. In three years time, Google’s e-mail platform will have become mature and competitive, and will also pose a serious threat,” Cain said. …
Its seems clear that IBM and Novell are not seen as major players moving foward; for IBM history repeats itsself …
… The e-mail market is likely to look dramatically different in four of five years time — when the new breed of open source-based products and hosted services have had time to get their acts together more effectively. Once this happens, it’s unlikely Microsoft — or anyone else — will be able to dominate the market to such an extent ever again. …
This vision is too early days I think. Sure SaaS and Open Source will have an effect on the market, but so will other functionality completing the communications and collaboration needs of an organisation. It remains to be seen which companies, able to provide software and services, will be main players in this market. Google will play an important role, as will Microsoft …
Source : Serverwatch.com
