John Katsaros

"Don't Let Me Down"

It's been two weeks since Facebook unveiled its new messaging service and so far the world seems to be pretty much what it was before.  Facebook execs called it everything from a "modern" messaging service to a "Gmail killer" except they didn't call it JAMS — Just Another Messaging Service.  After years in the e-mail business, it's pretty clear that it takes a marketing group several years before they really understand the market well enough to find their niche.  Messaging is one of the most difficult markets to understand.  That's because on the outside things look pretty simple — "it's just e-mail isn't it?" but finding the sweet spot is complex because ... e-mail is the most popular application on the planet.  e-mail works on almost every computer, handheld, tablet, mainframe, mini, micro ever built and will work on anything new that comes out in our lifetimes.  And its popularity is what makes it such a difficult area for marketers to understand — because it is so widely used, every marketing hypothesis that you dream up is valid — you can say, as Facebook's Mark Z. did — that  e-mail is too slow.  Sure, you'll find a lot of people that agree with that.  But you can also say that it's fast enough and you'll find a lot of users who agree with that.  Simply stated, finding the next killer app in messaging isn't easy.  Facebook says it had a huge team on their messaging service — 15 people for 15 months. It probably will take more than that (last time we checked Microsoft had over a thousand).  Facebook has built in some nice features — smart mail box to triage incoming messages and also organize threads and multiple delivery options (e-mail, Instant Messaging, SMS, whatever...) — most of which have been around in various forms.  And of course a lot of users will sign up for it — but they could have built a JPOES product (Just a Plain Old e-mail System) which would end up with lots of users. The most interesting thing is that they are giving each Facebook user an @Facebook.com e-mail address.  That's needed, of course, because despite being a modern mail system they really would like to interconnect with the rest of the world.  This may come out to be a good idea or, in fact, it may end up opening up Facebook users to the outside world — who knows what clever things developers will do.  Surely you can make pronouncements about having saved the world from traditional e-mail but what actually happens might turn out to be more complex than anyone anticipated.

The Messaging Fabric Report

We're pleased to announce our intent to create a new research report on the role of messaging infrastructure in the quickly evolving landscape of IT. This is the infrastructure that runs between the outside world and the systems that provide mailboxes internally — all big companies have it in some form. It seems to us that with the changing demands on email (e.g., compliance, DLP) and the evolving email alternatives (e.g., malware filtering in the Cloud or even mailboxes in the Cloud) this infrastructure layer could play an even more important role in the future orchestrating all the pieces. We're going to invite vendor participation in the effort in the form of briefing us on their offerings and market participation, and, helping us contact representative customers to better learn about the usage and business value of the solutions they provide.  We'd also like to hear from organizations running large e-mail systems.  For now we're calling it "The 2010 Messaging Fabric Report" and are planning on completing it soon.  If you're interested send us a note: jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.

The Messaging Fabric Report

We're pleased to announce our intent to create a new research report on the role of messaging infrastructure in the quickly evolving landscape of IT. This is the infrastructure that runs between the outside world and the systems that provide mailboxes internally — all big companies have it in some form. It seems to us that with the changing demands on email (e.g., compliance, DLP) and the evolving email alternatives (e.g., malware filtering in the Cloud or even mailboxes in the Cloud) this infrastructure layer could play an even more important role in the future orchestrating all the pieces. We're going to invite vendor participation in the form of briefing us on their offerings and market participation, and, helping us contact representative customers to better learn about the usage and business value of the solutions they provide.  We'd also like to hear from organizations running large e-mail systems.  For now we're calling it "The 2010 Messaging Fabric Report" and are planning on completing it in July.  If you're interested send us a note: jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.

Can You Keep A Secret?

IronPort's recent announcement of its acquisition of e-mail encryption specialist PostX comes at an interesting time.  For years, e-mail encryption companies have been knocking on enterprise doors but not getting much interest.  Combining e-mail encryption within an IronPort edge appliance is a good idea -- IronPort has a substantial installed base and has the capability to conveniently package PostX functionality to gain user adoption.  Plus, it gives IronPort more product functionality to sell to its installed base, always a good idea.  Interestingly, Microsoft's Exchange 2007 is also trying to make headway with secure mail functionality by offering opportunistic TLS encryption as part of its new edge functionality.  While these are "apples and oranges" security methods, the big question for IronPort is whether it can substantially gain adoption of its new PostX functionality ahead of the deployment of Exchange 2007.  But it may just be that the biggest obstacle to e-mail encryption -- user convenience -- is being solved by re-packaging the solution as a function of the edge.

Sendmail Turns 25

Normally you would expect that going to a vendor sponsored weekday reception would be a pretty boring affair but last week's Sendmail birthday party at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View turned out to be a lot of fun. Part of the fun was that the party was filled with Geeks who are a lot more interesting to talk to than corporate marketing types.  But the highlight of the evening was when Sendmail creator, Eric Allman gave his "History of Internet Mail 1960 -- 2040" talk which more or less reminded all of us how fast things have changed in just a short period of time (and that there is still a lot of change on the horizon.)  Plus, his dry sense of humor had everyone rolling in their seats.