back to article Google now a serious rival to Microsoft in cloud email

Gmail is emerging as a threat to the big boys in the enterprise email industry, despite holding just one per cent of the market and Google's refusal to tweak its service to suit individual customers. The Chocolate Factory also faces a bitter battle with Microsoft in the email cloud space - a war that could trample over other …

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  1. glenndavisdoctorg

    Cmail

    I have been using Cmail and have found it far superior to anything else.

    - Glenn Davis Doctor G

  2. Solomon Grundy

    Nice and Fluffy

    Wow. Someone woke up on the be a buddy to Google side of the bed this morning.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another super acurate Gartner report !

    I trust Gartner reports as much as I do Michael Fish's storm warnings.

  4. Kay Burley ate my hamster
    Stop

    Having implemented Office 365

    Everything you say about Gmail is true of O365.

  5. jefferai

    "just starting to look at businesses"?

    SInce when was Zimbra doing anything *but* looking at businesses?

  6. Robert Moore

    Stupid, people stupid!

    Anyone who uses Google docs, or gmail for business purposes will end up one of two ways.

    1. Out of business.

    2. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Google inc.

    We need an evil Google icon.

  7. david 63

    I'm just old fashioned but...

    ...I want my business email on my servers, backed up and secured to my specs.

    1. Microphage

      re: I'm just old fashioned but...

      @david 63: "I'm just old fashioned but...I want my business email on my servers, backed up and secured to my spec"

      In the event the Feds come calling don't forget to implement a process to surface mail your email archive to India and lose it.

  8. Daleos

    Agree with 1.

    Disagree with 2.

    Google is placed about 5th on my evil tech company list (after Facebook, Apple, Oracle and MS)

    1. Gleb

      Oy, Google is way eviler than Apple. Why they control the flow of information! Apple only controls the flow of money - the precious - "look, shiny!" demographic, previously devoid of life goals and who can now adhere to the mac lifestyle.

      Think of it this way. You can ignore an Apple product, but what other search provider are you going to turn to? Bing? Please. Same with facebook. If you don't like it don't use it. I don't. Haven't been invited to a party in about 3 years, but I still have my dignity!...

      Oh, and don't tell me you still think Microsoft is evil. I'm always amazed how much cool stuff they churn out on those PDCs and BUILDs and what have you. Really cool, like lambda-unwinding-awaits and... okay, this Build was a mild let down... but that doesn't make them evil. Also it's kind of nice that everyone just uses Office and people believe they are hot stuff just because they had a crack at VBA. Hurray for conformity!

      In fact the real evil - horns and pitchfork - company on that list is Oracle. Oy, they lock in just about every other company on the planet, and their databases don't even have IDENTITY properties. What's up with that? Horrible service, insane prices. Suing everyone.

  9. Robert E A Harvey

    eh?

    When did webmail become cloudmail?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      For Global APT Analysis

      "eh? When did webmail become cloudmail?" .... Robert E A Harvey Posted Monday 19th September 2011 16:26 GMT

      Whenever you can read it online .... and decide to act with the information/intelligence, Robert E A Harvey

  10. Alan Bourke

    I'll stick to Fastmail.fm

    .... which is better than Gmail and Office 365.

    1. Bear Features

      nothing like a subjective statement put out as fact... oh dear.

      Short answer... so?

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      I second Fastmail.fm

      One nice thing is that they are very open about outages, what caused them, and what they'll do to improve things.

    3. joejack

      Fastmail really is the best IMAP provider, but wouldn't most companies also want integrated group calendar/tasks/notes/etc that gmail, exchange et al [attempt to] provide?

    4. Nigel Steward

      FastMail.FM is top

      I too will stick with Fastmail.

      I have used it both personally, and for clients, and service & support are excellent.

      If you don't know it have a look.

      Nigel

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But how reliable are both parties?

    I have some doubts as to the seriousness of the rivalry. What seems to be ignored here is that many enterprises also care for another major factor: reliability. Not just for the product itself, also the company behind it.

    And I think this is where things can go wrong for Google; how well does it treat its business partners? Lets first focus on the obvious: Google partners with several companies to push their Android OS forward and suddenly, totally out of the blue, they're part of the competition themselves. MS have also pulled some stunts in the past (starting their own hardware line for example) but IMO that wasn't fully comparable.

    And what about all those Google resellers who started complaining? Eventually what happened was that Google locked down the entire forum and people were basically shut up. Keep well in mind that this involved the market place; but the same kind of construction exists for application resellers; the people which might sell these Google solutions on the Enterprise in the first place.

    Next; what's in it for the customers ?

    Its hard to deny that MS has a massive advantage here; all their online services are already heavily tied into their Office suite. So should a company which is already using MS Office (not that unlikely) suddenly decide for one or the other the main advantage here is that MS' solutions would seemingly "blend in" without too much change or extra training required.

    Finally, I think MS' biggest overall advantage is their accessibility and transparency, and the way they treat resellers in general.

    A Google business partner only seems to exist on the Enterprise. You can become a "partner" of some sorts, but that seems to be more tied into becoming a reseller or market place user / seller. As a Google reseller, what do you sell? Google apps, Google maps or Google earth. And here you see Google working on semantics.. Because you can get yourself a label to show the world: "Authorized Enterprise reseller", "Premier Enterprise reseller", "Authorized SMB reseller", "Premier SMB reseller".

    Whatever option you chose its going to be an investment for you. Read: it costs money! Also keep in mind that this isn't about semantics alone; A SMB reseller aims at companies with 250 employees or less. Naturally also has to pay less.

    Microsoft otoh has its partner membership opened up for any kind of company. No matter if you're a big or a small company; if you're a partner you're a partner. And will even be mentioned as such on their forums; your company name besides your own name clearly mentioned to be a Partner. Without costs... (lets be realistic; running a company costs money too you know).

    But most of all a partner is a partner. As soon as one wants to start selling MS licenses all he has to do is become a member of the MS Partner network (free of charge) and contact a distributor. None of that "premier reseller" crap. A partner can sell solutions to anyone he wants.

    Well, who has the better options here ?

    That is of course a personal opinion but mine is that MS' whole setup is much more appealing for business. Also because it can attract small and enterprise sized companies alike, and treats them as being equally important.

    So quite frankly.. A serious rival? I'll believe it when I see it.

    Google is a rival to MS, no question about it, but not on every market out there.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Over my dead body...

    There are some things that a company should hold close to itself and email is one of them. I still have reservations about sales (sfdotcom) and finance data (there are some SaaS variants I might consider). But when those auditors or lawyers turn up, some data you just need to have on hand immediately.

    Plus try explaining to your CEO that someone has access to his ummm webmail and there is nothing you can do about it.

  13. Mark 110

    OK can we have a top 10 cloud email providers review please. Can't be assed to do it myself but is definitely good content for ElReg. Seems theres definitely some good startups that need the exposure judging by previous posts.

    Can we fill the rest of the thread up with suggestions to be reviewed and criteria for them to be reviewed by - should give the vulture something to get its beak into ;)

  14. JDX Gold badge

    Personally I'd rather someone had to hack Google's or MS' servers to get my data than the ones set up in my basement by some kid paid £18k/year.

    1. BorkedAgain

      Hah! Ridiculous!

      Next you'll be saying you'd rather keep your money in a bank instead of in a sock under your mattress...

  15. Miaau

    Assume that 500 companies e-mail is all hosted on the same server, accessible from the internet. There is more incentive to gain illicit access there than, say, my corporate mail server stored theoretically safely on my network.

    Imagine being sold access to 500 company’s e-mails, similar to Botnets? That could be worth investing in, for your average double dealing crook.

  16. Christian Berger

    Keep in mind that many of those companies use Exchange

    Exchange is probably the last e-mail server storing it's data in binary blobs which you cannot fix or export easily. Those companies therefore believe that E-Mail is something magical and complex which can break easily and in horrible ways.

  17. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    DProgramMING .... for Corrupted Operating Systems with Zero Virtual Defense

    When an email is not private with personal delivery is it destined for public knowledge. That is the way the Virtual Basic Machinery is Programmed.

    The true significance of highly sensitive control information, out in the open and roaming, normally flies way over the heads of those with no interest or knowledge of highly sensitive control algorithms/methodologies/mechanisms.

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