Messaging Predictions for 2007
Industry experts offer comments and predictions for messaging in 2007
Unified Messaging
"2007 will be the year unified messaging, driven by the requirements of mobile workers, finally realizes its potential. The rich integration of enterprise email and voicemail systems with mobile devices, called Mobile Messaging, enables mobile workers to rapidly respond to clients and customers and maximize their productivity."
-Jens Skakkebaek, CTO of Adomo, Inc.
Single Source
"2007 will mark the year companies start demanding that email and its ancillary services, such as archiving, disaster recovery, unified messaging and message hygiene, should merge into a single sourced, end-to-end, on-premise deployed solution. One that IT departments can treat as a utility-just like they treat electricity, heat, and air conditioning today."
-Keith McCall, CTO of Azaleos Corporation
Practices and Upgrades
Faced with the challenge of email-related fraud, global financial institutions will drive industry standards and practices for authenticating and certifying message traffic. This will lay the groundwork for wide-scale differentiation between valid and fraudulent email by both networks (who can filter traffic) and users (who respond to it). Also in 2007, there will be a wholesale upgrade of the core of enterprise email networks (the "backbone") to replace over-taxed legacy applications in order to support policy and compliance requirements for traffic in and out of networks. This upgrade will be based on advances in the core technology for routing and delivering email.
-Kelly Wanser, CEO of ColdSpark, Inc.
Legal Discovery
"Fortiva is predicting that the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) will make addressing legal discovery risks a top priority for businesses in every industry. As the amount of stored email data continues to increase and email retention becomes even more necessary, outsourcing and data privacy will also become hot button issues in the coming year; and more IT managers will be performing ROI and TCO analyses to justify and optimize the impact of solutions purchases. Ultimately, the need to reduce the company's exposure to legal and compliance risks and possibilities of information leakage means email surveillance will get its big break in 2007."
-Paul Chen, CEO of Fortiva, Inc.
Unsubscribe
"2007 will be the year of the unsubscribe buttons. ISPs are beginning to see the benefits, and we'll see them popping up everywhere right next to or in place of Report Spam buttons - and that's good news for marketers and consumers!"
-Josh Baer, CTO of Datran Media Corporation
Trusted Email
"On the one hand, email use continues to grow. Many new communication and community modes themselves rely on email as an underpinning. On the other hand, spammers and phishers continue to evolve more and more sophisticated attacks. The need for trusted email becomes more obvious."
-Richard Gingras, chairman, CEO & co-founder of Goodmail Systems, Inc.
Security Threats Grow
"We expect to see spam volume double, bandwidth triple and more viruses with spyware. Politically or economically motivated attacks will rise, potentially creating homeland security threats. Video on social networking sites and media sites will increase malware distribution. However, progress is expected by integrating antispam, anti-virus and anti-spyware with a framework like Cisco's Self-Defending Network."
-Tom Gillis, SVP of worldwide marketing & sales for IronPort Systems, Inc.
Initiatives Take Precedent
"For the enterprise, email storage, archiving and compliance initiatives will take precedent in 2007. Additionally, the highly mobile workforce will create a greater demand for secure email applications. We also predict that issues related to free email will be unveiled and replaced with solutions that don't compromise critical content."
-Bethany Mayer, chief marketing officer of Mirapoint
Mobility
Mobility will be the key development in 2007. The concept of mobility I'm talking about is the ability for an information worker to be mobile and have browser-based access to all capabilities-email, IM, fax, electronic documents and collaboration tools. The focus here is on reducing the cost to employers by allowing users to work anywhere without an office, and allowing users to be flexible in where and when they work.
-Michael D. Osterman, president of Osterman Research, Inc.
Encryption
"The market for full disk encryption software explodes in 2007. Countless millions of lost records shake customer and corporate confidence. Business units and executives are just not going to take it anymore. The cost of not deploying enterprise-wide encryption becomes too great; data protection becomes another layer of enterprise security."
-Andrew Krcik, VP of marketing for PGP Corporation
Email Capacity
"Primarily composed of spam, the volume of inbound email hitting enterprises- which increased by at least 2-4x in the past 12 months-will continue to rise by at least 3x during 2007. As a result, organizations will require even more effective anti-spam technology, as well as increased mail processing capacity to handle this load. Make email capacity planning one of your top resolutions for 2007 and budget appropriately."
-Andres Kohn, vice president of product management for Proofpoint, Inc.
A New Era
"The third era of messaging security is underway. Phase One: MTA-centric products that guaranteed delivery. Phase Two: anti-virus/spam-centric products for inbound mail. Phase Three: policy-centric products featuring bi-directional security. With 80 percent of compliance violations occurring within SMTP mail, extrusion protection and single point products will lag behind policy-rich, bi-directional security applications."
-Donald J. Massaro, President and CEO of Sendmail, Inc.
Transactional Email Transformed
"Adoption of service-based, transactional email as a supplemental channel for marketing and brand-building will reach critical mass in 2007. Static, plain text confirmation emails will be replaced by highly branded HTML messages that feature relevant information and marketing offers. This will transform transactional email into an important channel for fostering customer loyalty and generating incremental revenue."
-Dave Lewis, vice president of market development for StongMail Systems, Inc.
The Email "Blast" is Dead
Relevancy is critical for email marketing in 2007. With inboxes bursting with information, readers will choose carefully what they read; spending their time only with emails that provide them value. It is easy to screen and discard emails that miss the mark. The day of the email "blast" is dead.
-Jordan Ayan, founder of SubscriberMail, LLC
Microsoft Exchange Server
"In 2007, Exchange completes its evolution from a point application to the unified communication platform for the enterprise; specifically, the backbone for messaging, mobility systems, archiving and compliance solutions, plus VoIP implementations. This will profoundly impact IT as now this platform truly is THE mission critical infrastructure for the enterprise."
-Steve Lewis, founder and CEO of Teneros