IDC 711

I  D  C     V  E  N  D  O  R     S  P  O  T  L  I  G  H  T  

 

Using a Hosted Service for Holistic E-Mail

Management

October 2008

Adapted from Worldwide Messaging Security 2008 2012 Forecast and 2007 Vendor Shares: Forecast Looks 

Cloudy, by Brian Burke IDC # 213571; and Worldwide Email Archiving Applications 2007 2011 Forecast and

2006 Vendor Shares: Storage Optimization, Mailbox Management, and Records Retention for eDiscovery and

Compliance Drive Investments, by Laura DuBois, IDC # 206729. 

Sponsored by Mimecast

 

Organizations are increasingly beset by policy, regulatory, continuity and security requirements for

their data. This is particularly applicable for email, which has become the primary communication and

collaborative platform at many organizations. To meet the demands imposed by regulatory

requirements while protecting themselves against litigation-related discovery requests and

safeguarding their networks against security breaches organizations are turning to email

management and other messaging solutions that provide functionality for archiving, business

continuity and security. According to IDC, the market for email archiving applications alone was 703

million in 2007, a 34% increase over the prior year's revenues, and IDC estimates that 2008 revenues

will approach 900 million.

The Need for Email Management Solutions 

Increasingly complex messaging requirements characterized by worldwide regulatory, compliance

and archiving issues in addition to longstanding security concerns are driving the adoption of holistic

email management from the cloud. Holistic email management solutions from the cloud are hosted

services that integrate messaging management with archiving, business continuity and security

components. According to IDC, the market for hosted messaging security services will increase from

443 million in 2007 to nearly 1.750 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of

31.6%. IDC estimates that in many cases, 50 70% of unwanted messaging traffic can be stopped in

the cloud before it enters the corporate network. (Cloud-based software, as well as software-as-a-

service (SaaS) and hosted messaging security are essentially variations of the same thing; such

software is characterized by the software, services, and support offerings that are specifically built

and designed for one-to-many delivery over the Internet.) Such integrated solutions are becoming

increasingly necessary for many organizations: Since governance, risk management and compliance

are intrinsically linked, organizations are looking for messaging solutions that integrate the policy

enforcement, hygiene, continuity, retention and discovery issues related to email.

In such a complex and intertwined environment, mitigating messaging risk is no longer just a matter

of filtering out spam and malicious code such as viruses, Trojans and worms. At many organizations

today, email is the most important messaging application and collaboration platform; typically these

organizations no longer deploy email servers to handle email per se they build complex email

infrastructures that are designed to handle numerous regulatory and compliance-related activities

such as the enforcement of corporate policies and procedures, archiving data for legal purposes, and

as a platform for ensuring business continuity in the event of a disaster.

In effect, messaging solutions need to be much more multi-dimensional and comprehensive.

Concerns with data loss prevention and regulatory compliance are driving the need for more