Messaging Predictions for 2009

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Industry experts consider the future and offer thoughts and advice

Moving Beyond Email

“In 2009, messaging will continue to be less and less equivalent to email. The explosion in content sizes will drive users to ad hoc Managed File Transfer. Nonlinear collaboration modes will drive communities to wikis, SharePoint, and social networking sites. IM and SMS will blur with Yammer and Tweets. The toughest challenge will be to implement comprehensive messaging policy, both in the business and technical sense, as recent investments in email filtering, compliance, and archiving are broadened for messaging.”
—Axway VP of Technology John Thielens

Best Practice for Cutting IT Costs in 2009: Optimize Email Server Usage

“IT administrators can save a great deal of money by moving email from high cost transactional storage on the email server to low cost archival storage on a dedicated message archiving appliance. In addition, moving spam and virus filtering from your email servers to dedicated email security appliances saves server resources that would otherwise be committed to scanning.”
—Barracuda Networks VP of Product Management Stephen Pao

Greater Cooperation

“The United States Congress will reach new levels of cooperation in 2009 on privacy and cybersecurity issues. Partisan politics seemed to bury these issues during the previous Administration; however, there are many Republicans who are willing to work with Democrats, and vice versa, on these important issues with a less dogmatic voice in the White House.”
—Center for Democracy & Technology VP Ari Schwartz

Online Crime Economy

“As in the legitimate Internet economy, an online criminal world has become a global, thriving network of product and service providers and consumers doing business together. In the short term, this specialization and collaboration are making online criminals more nimble and effective. In the longer term, the online crime economy may also be on its way to becoming a bureaucracy. The positive about this: One unavoidable side effect of becoming more established is a paper trail, which may make it easier for law enforcement organizations worldwide to track and apprehend more of these offenders in the future.”
—Cisco Fellow and Chief Security Researcher Patrick Peterson

Increase in Managed Services

“In 2009, the adoption of managed services for email—hosted email as well as SaaS continuity, security and archiving—will accelerate dramatically. Three factors will drive this shift: (1) Shrinking IT budgets that drive cost reduction; (2) Increasing economies of scale for hosted services resulting in dramatically lower costs; (3) Increasing feature parity with on-premise alternatives. These changes will lead companies of all sizes, including the Fortune 500, to look closely at managed services to improve their email ecosystem.”
—Dell Director of Marketing Paul D’Arcy

Microsoft and SaaS

“There will be a great upsurge of interest among businesses in hosted messaging offerings. This will be stimulated by Microsoft’s SaaS versions of its messaging and collaboration offerings. There will also be strong interest in third-party offerings, especially those of Google and Cisco. As a result, Microsoft will start to experience more competition in the messaging space.”
—Ferris Research President and Senior Analyst David Ferris

Web Malware Poisons Trusted Online Brands

“Anyone who reads email or uses IM has already been attacked. Now, social networking users and even casual Web browsers are increasingly at risk. Cyber criminals are poisoning ‘trusted’ Web sites to spread Web-based malware using techniques like obfuscated JavaScript that exploit browser vulnerabilities. Facebook, Blogger, and the Google AdWords platform have all been hijacked to deliver malware. Dynamic, real-time detection of inbound Web attacks and outbound ‘callbacks’ to criminal servers is key to halting the spread of Web malware.”
—FireEye Founder and CEO Ashar Aziz