Email battle turns to cloud Battlefield: Gmail threatens Outlook

Google's Gmail email service, five years after its launch, has finally grown to the point where it can challenge Microsoft's Outlook online and other on-line e-mail services, according to a Gartner survey.

Gartner analysts say that Gmail has signed a service contract with 5,000 large companies, with growing clout. Gmail provides cloud e-mail services that are considered safer than traditional e-mail and are easy to use remotely; traditional e-mail messages are stored on a company-owned server.

Microsoft recently launched the cloud computing version of Office 365 for the Exchange e-mail server. Until then, Microsoft had been reluctant to launch the product until Google became a threat to take action.

Matthew Cain, vice president of Gartner Research, said: "The kan of Gmail to conquer the corporate market is still fraught with dangers, but Gmail is now seen as a mainstream cloud e-mail service provider." While Gmail's corporate email market share is only about 1%, it has nearly half the market share of corporate cloud e-mail. ”

Cloud e-mail accounts for less than 4% of the overall corporate email market, Kan said, but Gartner expects cloud e-mail to be a fast-growing market, with a total corporate e-mail market expected to reach 20% by 2016 and 55% by 2020.

Kan also said that currently only Google and Microsoft have the ability to provide corporate cloud e-mail services. Competitors, including Novell GroupWise and IBM Lotus Domino, have lost market power, and Cisco has ended cloud e-mail operations.

But Gartner says Google still resists the ability to provide specific industry customer requirements, such as banking might require surveillance, but Google, which pursues the mass-market, is unwilling to add this functionality to Gmail.

Kan said: "The fierce competition between Microsoft and Google will make two companies increasingly strong, prompting them to accelerate the application of cloud technology." Market competition will also make it difficult for other service providers to compete directly in the cloud e-mail and collaboration (collaboration) field. ”

Two companies are now competing fiercely for government and corporate contracts, especially as Microsoft tries to extend cloud e-mail and collaboration services to the public sector. San Francisco has been using Microsoft's e-mail service to provide an e-mail account for 23,000 civil servants.

(Responsible editor: admin)