2008 IDC

4

Market and Technology Trends  

Email management and messaging solutions are available as both an on-premises software or from

the cloud in a SaaS-based model.

According to IDC, the market for email management solutions continues to be competitive among the

established players, while new entrants also enter the market. Large, well-established vendors are

seeking to move downmarket and transition from a focused to a broader product strategy and

mailbox management use case. Smaller, innovative SaaS pure-plays continue to gain market

traction, particularly in the SMB space. IDC finds that the movement toward cloud computing and

online services such as archiving is significant.

Another factor driving holistic, cloud-based solutions are users themselves. User acceptability is a

large barrier to effective messaging solutions; the more individual components the user has to deal

with the more they will attempt to circumvent the controls, often leading to breaches of policies and

procedures. In addition, during business continuity scenarios where employees are already stressed,

trying to remember how to use unfamiliar tools can be a contributing factor to ineffective business

continuity planning efforts.

Considering Mimecast

Mimecast is a privately-funded global provider of SaaS-based email management products and

services. Founded in 2002, Mimecast spent the first two years building its services and perfecting its

platform infrastructure prior to launching into the market. The company's products and services

address end-to-end email management issues and include features that address archiving, business

continuity, and security. By offering email management in a SaaS model, Mimecast provides

customers with email management solutions that do not require hardware, software or capital

expenses.

Mimecast employs 140 people, and has 2,000 customers in Europe, North America, Africa, the

Middle East and offshore. The company has experienced year-on-year revenue growth of 300%.

Mimecast offers a total end-to-end solution for managing email through its entire lifecycle; the

company says its products are available for a cost similar to many point solutions addressing only

one single area of email management such as archiving for example. In addition, Mimecast says that

the reduced risk and management costs that its SaaS-based products provide can result in additional

financial benefits.

According to Mimecast, its products and services allow customers to take an incremental approach to

end-to-end email management. Customers can start with email archiving as a service and add rich

email management services (e.g.: routing, security, policy control, and continuity) as needed with

minimal disruption as the services are already pre-integrated into Mimecast's offering. Mimecast also

offers integration with LAN based systems such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange that is

designed to provide end users with a seamless experience.

Mimecast provides a solution designed to tackle organizational issues related to corporate

governance, risk mitigation and regulatory or legislative compliance of email. The company's solution

can be deployed in a manner that is transparent to the end-user business units and staff. According

to the company, the Mimecast platform was designed backwards after considering the governance,

risk and compliance requirements for email. The considerations for messaging security and the

inherent requirements to retain and store email with confidentiality, integrity and availability were all

factored into the design of the Mimecast platform. According to Mimecast, its solution can protect

organizations against 99% of spam.