* A look at some of the smaller players in the corporate e-mail arena
Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell GroupWise account for more than 80% of corporate e-mail seats in North America. Most of the attention focused on corporate e-mail and instant messaging tends to be on these three platforms given that these companies are the ‘movers and shakers’ in the context of corporate messaging, and the fact that they all provide very robust capabilities.
But what if you had to implement complete corporate e-mail and IM capabilities with a company in the ‘second tier’ of messaging companies – Ipswitch, MailSite, Gordano, CommuniGate, Scalix or Zimbra, are just a few of the many companies that provide corporate messaging capabilities. I use the term ‘second tier’ not in any derisive way, but only to indicate that these companies are smaller players in the context of corporate e-mail and are considered and deployed far less often than the Big Three.
For example, one of these players – Gordano – offers a very nice suite of capabilities (the Gordano Messaging Suite – GMS) that includes an e-mail server that runs on either Windows or UNIX platforms and is priced at $2.70 per user for 2,000 mailboxes. GMS includes a Collaboration Server that uses a MAPI connector and provides full Outlook support that also integrates with Apple’s iCal, Mozilla Calendar and other systems – pricing for the Collaboration Server is $16 per seat for 2,000 users. Plus, GMS also includes an IM system, Webmail server, robust antivirus and antispam capabilities, a firewall, a list server and an archiving capability in various additional modules.
Clearly, Microsoft, IBM Lotus and Novell are considered much more often than are these second tier players. Why? If you’re somehow involved in managing your company’s messaging system, I’d like to hear from you to get your views on this, and on why the smaller players aren’t evaluated in the same context as are the larger players.
