* More predictions about e-mail
Here are a couple more of my predictions about the future of e-mail.
Today, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), Web conferencing, voice and fax are relatively distinct islands of communications with only a few bridges between them in most cases. I believe that the distinctions between them will seriously blur over the next four years.
There are a number of products that already provide unified communications and more that will be introduced in the near future, but with technology adoption cycles being what they are because of budget constraints and the like, particularly in large enterprises, I believe that widespread adoption of true unified communications will take a while.
Erasing the distinctions between different types of communications makes communication easier and increases the likelihood of getting in touch with someone. In today’s segmented world of communications options, a sender has to know the recipient’s location and availability to maximize the chances of communication. In a unified communications world, a recipient can specify how and when he or she wants to receive communication, making it easier for both sender and recipient alike.
Imagine a future in which you can communicate with someone simply by sending them a single message and specifying only its priority. A presence-aware messaging system would know if that message should be delivered via e-mail, via instant message, via voice or if an ad hoc Web conference of some sort was needed without any intervention on the part of sender or recipient. Integrating messaging in this way would allow you to receive a high-priority message via IM instead of voice if you were in a meeting, or it might deliver the message to your PDA on a Wi-Fi-enabled 787 or A380 if the messaging system was integrated with a real-time travel reservation system.
One final prediction: I believe that during the next nine months, there is going to be a very nasty virus that will seriously disrupt messaging from the enterprise on down, on a worldwide scale. Messaging systems are still quite vulnerable to virus and worm attacks as the Sober worm so clearly demonstrated. Late on May 1, viruses and worms represented about one in 28 e-mail messages, but on May 3 they represented one in seven messages – a fourfold increase in the space of about 36 hours due almost entirely to the Sober virus.
I’d appreciate your comments on these predictions – please drop me a line at mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com
