As we look back at 2009 and look ahead to 2010, there’s no denying that plenty of change is still in the air for IT professionals and corporations of all sizes.
With the recent rise in alternative communication methods and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter changing the way people communicate virtually, many people are now questioning whether email’s reign as king of communications will soon be over.
Additionally, as our economy hit a significant downturn in 2009, many businesses were prompted to look more closely at alternative IT solutions to reduce costs. The enterprise email market was not immune to this trend, and recent efforts to reduce messaging infrastructure costs have already impacted business decisions that will be made in the coming year.
With 2010 right around the corner, the Sendmail team has spent some time not only analyzing the enterprise email trends that occurred in 2009, but in a press release we issued today, we’ve also made some predictions about the market trends we see developing next year. We made these trend predictions mainly to help our customers gain a better understanding of how market changes are impacting the evolution of email, so they can make the best decisions for their businesses in 2010 in order to further reduce IT costs and modernize their messaging infrastructures.
So what are we predicting will happen in 2010?
Well, when we look into our crystal ball, we see that despite claims of increasing uses of social media networks are “killing the use of email,” we predict “email is far from dead.” Instead, we project that in 2010, and beyond, enterprise email will continue to remain a business-critical capability, and the dominate messaging tool used by enterprises throughout the world for secure and reliable business communications.
By looking into our crystal ball again, we also see much of the focus next year devoted to security and efficiency. In 2010, we predict the following enterprise email trends will be realized:
- Stronger demand for data loss prevention in US and EMEA markets
- Increased demand for cloud services, driven primarily by IT cost reductions
- Many more email services, such as bulk email delivery, will be brought in-house
- Virtualization will continue to grow significantly, fueled mainly by failover/disaster-recovery and server consolidation needs
- Increased encryption of sensitive data will be driven by regulatory requirements and stronger corporate security policies
So what do you think of our predictions for next year? Do you see these trends occurring in 2010, or does your crystal ball forecast something different? Please let us know – we’d love to hear your thoughts.