Web-Based Email Comparison

IT/Redux has an updated summary of it’s Office 2.0 Roundup with a review of 10 online email applications. The review focused on services that have been registered in their database, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, FastMail, Jubii, Zimbra, Webmail.us, WebExMail, Mailroom, Tamadaa. As they noted there are a lot of email players so narrowing the field to a reasonable number to review is tough although I would have probably replaced a couple on the list with established players Load.com and BlueTie.  

I’m a big fan of the IT/Redux site, the only thing that I believe the Office 2.0 Roundup leaves to be desired is a perspective of application suites. Some of the tools listed encapsulate multiple functions and while they may not be the best at each individual function there is something to be said about their ability to integrate functions together and provide efficiency.

Will the real Zimbra user count please stand up?

I’m with Pat on this one. 2MM new users in 3 months? That’s 22M new users a day, including weekends. Please….

Open-Source vs. SAAS

An interesting post by Mark Suster at Koral doing a little bit of a compare/contrast of Open-Source vs. SAAS. I found it interesting since some companies are SAAS (BlueTie, Zoho) and others are Open-Source (Zimbra, Scalix). 

I wonder if it doesn’t come down to the level of technical sophistication that will make one or the other more attactive to an enterprise. For example, would a small business owner of say an office of 5 to 10 people ever think about getting something they have to install or configure on a server like Zimbra for example? Surely they would go with something more ‘turn-key’ like BlueTie for email and calendar and ThinkFree or Zoho for documents.

So maybe it comes down to enterprise size, open-source for larger enterprises that have their own IT staff and SAAS for smaller enterprises or those larger enterprises that are trying to save IT staff costs.

It would be good to include a classificiation of target company size in that product chart I mentioned before.

Web-Based Apps vs. Microsoft

There was a very good article summarizing the Web-Based Apps vs. Microsoft discussion by Cynthia Harvey over at Datamation entitled: Free Web-Based Office Productivity Apps. The sub heads within the article pretty much sum up the discussion to date:

Let’s Share

Wherever You Go, There It Is

Whose Server Do You Trust?

Free!

Show Me The Features

Just A Bit Quirky

Will The Empire Strike Back?

Again, a very good summary. I think it will be great to do a summary of progress in each of these areas say in 6 months and then again in a year to see what changes have occured and progress made.

Slowing Down for the Holiday

Well we’ve reached the bottom of the PR trough with the holiday coming next week. The blogs are slowing down, the only press releases that come out will be the ones they don’t want you to read. Alternatively, who will want to make the first splash of the new year? Who will have the first press release of the year? Zimbra, Zoho, Foldera? I’ll provide what link bait I can for whomever’s first. Just don’t tell Google, otherwise I might have to add a ‘NoFollow’ tag….

 Here are a few other things I’d like to see in 07:

A comprehensive chart of who offers what in terms of applications for business; email, ’word’ documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint, project planning, etc. Any volunteers? You should be able to get a lot of links for something thorough. 

Will storage size stop being used as a product differentiator in 2007? Can someone please do a survey for us and let us know if customers really see this as a key factor?

How many new products will Zoho launch in 07? Raju or Arvind, is there a Zoho Mail coming?

Do those ratios in Nichebot really work? (Keyword campaign in progress.)

Foldera Launch….. Still skeptical Oliver & Dave…. you can send my beta login to catchyaintit [at] yahoo.com  

Who will have a mash up for Goowy first?

Which conference, related to our topics here, is THE one to go to for 2007?

Will the expanded features of products like Zimbra, HyperOffice and others begin to make a serious dent into the Hosted Exchange market? 

What do you think will be interesting with everyone in 2007, basecamp, bluetie, everyone.net, foldera, fusemail, hyperoffice, intermedia.net, load.com, mailsnare, mailstreet, MI8, myoffice.net, norada, runbox, scalix, sherweb, simplicato, solodox, swishmail, thinkfree, usa.net, webmail.us, zimbra, zoho…

What else needs to be covered?

Our visitor stats are growing pretty strong so please help tell your story, provide some thought leadership and expand the dialogue to keep people coming back. We can all benefit from more content, more links and more exposure.

Radicati Reports

The Radicati Group seems to have some interesting reports for email and hosted exchange companies. I’d be curious to hear from any of you that have gotten any of thier reports and if you find the information accurate/valuable? This recent report includes an evaluation with ASP-One, Everyone.net, Intermedia.net, Mailstreet, Mi8, USA.NET, Webmail.us and others. It’s certainly an incomplete report as I would have expected it to include BlueTie, Load and Zimbra and possible a couple of others.

Web 2.0 Product Partnerships

I think this is a very interesting partnership. I wonder if it is a precursor to an eventual merger since the products seem to be such compliments. Or will there be other similar integrations such that you have SugarCRM and your choice of mail products like Zimbra, BlueTie, Fusemail?

Microsoft Is Your Competition

Support for the position that Microsoft Office will remain strong continues to grow. There are two interesting articles on PC World Canada.

The first a two-parter called Office Doomsday? (part two: Office Doomsday: Backsliding to the desktop) is another interesting real life experience with trying to use online products. Similar to the link in our previous post Microsoft is Worth It (probably better titled, now that I think of it, Office is Worth It).

The other is titled Online Takes on Office and is along the same vein as our prior post Microsoft Will Survive (also probably better titled, Office Will Survive). THis article highlights that Redmond is taking notice of online competitors by noting; “in its August 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft specifically listed ThinkFree as an Office rival.”

So how are online document companies going to position their products against office? What is the value proposition, key features and tag line that are going to resonate with people and get them to leave MS Office? Put on your marketing hats an throw out some tag lines…..

Are the old portal pages on the way out?

Do you think that the offerings from NetVibes, PageFlakes and Goowy will replace what is now the ‘traditional’ portal page like you My Yahoo! page or your Google personalized page? And which one is your favorite? Personally I like the ability to place elements wherever I want on the page as with Goowy.  I’m dissapointed though that of the three, none of the RSS feed widgets allow a bookmarking or starring like the Google reader. What about Yahoo! Widgets? Are they doomed because they are tied to the desktop where as these others are not? And all of our players, BlueTie, Zimbra, Hyperoffice, Zoho, Everyone.Net, everyone should have a widget for all of these, your task list, incoming email, etc.

Open Source Exchange Alternatives

Justin Silverton put together a short list of Open Source Exchange Alternatives.  Are there others not listed here? There seem to be more and more players everyday. Some offer just email and calendaring, some offer email and calendaring with documents, some offer project collaboration without email. How is this going to shake out? It’s fine that many of these companies are getting press, Zoho, Zimbra, Google Docs, but how are small businesses being penetrated with these offerings? Are they being penetrated with these offerings? What is the future of Hosted Exchange will all of these new AJAX competitors that are likely to have more features? Lots of questions, would be great to get some input here from the players, I know your reading, I see your traffic….