In-Depth, Objective Analysis of the Messaging Industry

A contributed articled by:

Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext , and
Jeff Brainard, Director of Marketing at Socialtext

Volume 17, Number 6

June 2007

FOCUS: Email 2.0 The Evolution of a New Communication

Paradigm
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.

Executive Summary
A Brief History
The Technology Shift from Email 1.0
The Email 2.0 Era and Wikis
Recommendations for Vendors and Users

pg. 2
pg. 3
pg. 4
pg. 5
pg. 10

INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, email has increasingly become one of the prevalent means of
communication within organizations of all sizes. Originally intended for relatively short
asynchronous communications, email has rapidly evolved into the main mechanism for
day-to-day group interaction. While this works well up to a point, the exponential
increase in the volume of emails exchanged is pointing to the need for a new paradigm
for more effective group communications. This issue of the Messaging Technology
Report looks at wiki technologies and the benefits they can bring to collaboration.

The Messaging Technology Report is published monthly by The Radicati Group, a Consulting and Market
Research Firm. 595 Lytton Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301 Tel: (650) 322 8059 Fax: (650) 322 8061
http://www.radicati.com Publisher: Dr. Sara Radicati.
The information and opinions in each issue are based on the best information available, but the completeness and
accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
Copyright 2007 by The Radicati Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited. Product, technology and service names are trademarks of their respective owners.

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Email provides a powerful means for users to communicate, however, it does little to
empower users to truly collaborate on sharing ideas, work on projects together and build
true virtual teams. In the past, various groupware suites have attempted to extend
messaging with things like shared workspaces or folder structures linked to the email
inbox to facilitate collaboration; however, these groupware tools faced significant
challenges due to implementation costs and time spent training users. Often these tools
would just get in the way, and as a faster way to interact, users would just give up and
send yet another email. More importantly, the constant use of email as the main means
of business communications has led to most of the intellectual capital of organizations
being trapped in emails which are often difficult to locate and not easily accessible to
everyone. Today, it is commonly believed that up to 90% of collaboration occurs
through emails, and up to 75% of the knowledge assets of an organization end up being
stored in email messages.
While email is by no means going away, a host of complementary technologies are
emerging to add value to email and augment its use. Things like instant messaging (IM),
chat, text messaging (SMS and MMS), RSS feeds and blogs, and much more. Wikis are
yet one more example of such new technologies. From being originally a Web 2.0
consumer application, wikis have crossed the proverbial chasm from cutting-edge to a
powerful business tool with proven business benefits.
Wikis make way for a new era in collaboration the Email 2.0 era where a flexible,
easy-to-use collaboration environment can now more effectively empower users to share
information and collaborate on documents, projects and any business activity. Its
primary benefits include reducing email overload, accelerating project cycle times,
cutting search costs, and more.
With evolution towards Email 2.0, we can expect to see very innovative solutions from
collaboration vendors across the board, leveraging email and integrating it with wikis,
IM, presence, social networking, and more. These new technologies provide a new
experience for end users, offering a better means to store data, share amongst teams, and
present information.

Copyright 2007 The Radicati Group, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited, All Rights Reserved.

Next months issue of the Messaging Technology Report will look at Replication as
the Next Step in E-mail Disaster Recovery.

Recent Research Studies Currently Available from The Radicati Group, Inc.

Email Compliance and Policy Management Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3,000)

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino Market Analysis, 2007-2011 (cost $3,000)
Email Disaster Recovery Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3,000)
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Total Cost of Ownership (cost $3000*)
Email Archiving Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
European Hosted Email Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
Email Security Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
Email Clients Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
Corporate Email Market in Asia Pac, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
E-mail Reputation Services, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)
Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook Market Analysis, 2007-2011
Identity Management Market, 2007-2011 (cost $3000*)

* $2,500 if paid for by credit card.

To order, or for more information on any of these publications please call

650-322-8059, or visit our Web site: http://www.radicati.com.
PAST ISSUES - Past issues of The Messaging Technology Report are available at
$40.00 per copy (international please add $3.00 for airmail shipping and handling). Past
issues to date include:
May/2007
Apr/2007
Mar/2007
Feb/2007
Jan/2007
Dec/2006
Nov/2006
Oct/2006
Sept/2006
Aug/2006

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Internal Policy Compliance for Companies in Non-Regulated Industries
Windows Mobile 6
IBM Lotus Plans for 2007
The Emerging Market for Mobile Portal Applications
Content Security Pre-review Solutions
Research In Motion
Mobile IM
Windows Vista
SIP/SIMPLE vs. XMPP

Copyright 2007 The Radicati Group, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited, All Rights Reserved.

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