Google's Gmail service is now mainstream as an email provider for businesses, and rivalry between the company and Microsoft leaves little space for any other player in cloud-based enterprise email, according to Gartner.
Web-hosted services account for between three and four percent of the overall
enterprise email market, the analyst firm said on Friday. In this relatively small sector, Google is a major player, it noted. While Google's share in enterprise email overall hovers at around one percent, it has close to half of online enterprise email, the firm's research has shown.
"The road to its enterprise enlightenment has been long and bumpy, but Gmail should now be considered a mainstream cloud email supplier," Gartner analyst Matthew Cain said in a statement on Friday.
Google has been selling Gmail to businesses for the last five
years, and it has developed into a viable alternative to Microsoft
Exchange Online and other web-hosted email systems, Cain said.
Indeed, Google has continuously added new features and policy options to its cloud email product. In January, for example, it gained email authentication and administrators got the ability to lock down email access for specific users.
Two-step verification has provided a security boost for logging in to Gmail, and offline access is now possible again using HTML 5. Google has also released tools to make Gmail act as a backup for Microsoft Exchange messages, and to generally make it easier for enterprises to migrate from Exchange to Google Apps.
Path to enterprise enlightenment
While Cain praised Google for the way Gmail has matured for businesses, he said the company's primary focus is on the wider market, especially consumers. He said some financial institutions and other large organisations with complex email requirements have reported reluctance on Google's part to create new features for a small subset of users. An example is surveillance, which banks need but most people do not want.
– Matthew Cain, Gartner
Gmail's path to enterprise enlightenment has been slow, grudging and painful.
In addition, large system integrators and enterprises have reported a lack of transparency from Google in areas such as continuity, security and compliance, he said.
Google took more than two years to move Gmail out of beta, and even longer to introduce enterprise-friendly features such as the ability to turn off threaded conversations.
"Gmail's path to enterprise enlightenment has been slow, grudging and painful," Cain said in a Gartner report published in August.
Nevertheless, the analyst firm expects Google's share of the overall enterprise email market to hit 10 percent within a few years. Online email services will make up 20 percent of the total market by the end of 2016, and 55 percent by the close of 2020, it predicted.
Enterprise email market
Cain pointed out that Gmail is the only system other than Microsoft Exchange to prosper in the enterprise email market over the last several years.
"Other enterprise email providers — Novell GroupWise and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino — have lost market momentum, Cisco closed its cloud email effort and VMware's Zimbra is only now refocusing on the enterprise space," he noted.
Microsoft has responded to Gmail's rapid update pace by saying it will introduce new features to the cloud version of Exchange before they hit the traditional on-premises version.
Cain suggested that the "intense competition" between Microsoft and Google will strengthen both companies and enable them to apply their expertise to other enterprise cloud endeavours.
"The rivalry will make it difficult for other suppliers to compete directly in the cloud email and collaboration space," he added.
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