(12-Mar-10) Ask the typical office worker and Microsoft Outlook is email. Its corporate ubiquity has translated into similar dominance by Exchange in backend infrastructure. Industry surveys put Exchange’s enterprise market share in the 60 to 90% range, with Info-Tech Analyst Tim Hickernell citing a figure of 79% in its latest survey. While individuals and home users long ago switched to Web mail, and indeed innovative cloud collaboration services may represent the future of enterprise email, traditional client server email still rules the corporate market.
Given such market realities, the recent release of Exchange 2010 presents IT managers with yet another upgrade decision: bite the bullet and move to the latest technology, stick with what’s already working, or change paradigms and look to the cloud for online email and collaboration services. The dilemma is particularly acute for those Microsoft shops that skipped the Exchange 2007 release, almost two-thirds by Hickernell’s count, and are on software platforms dating back seven years or more.