Gmail fast becoming viable alternative to Outlook for big business

Google’s Gmail, popular with individual users and smaller start-ups across the world, is now fast becoming a viable option for big business. Microsoft’s Outlook has traditionally been the email client of choice for business, but that is changing says research firm Gartner.

Gartner says Google’s enterprise Gmail is building momentum with businesses that have more than 5 000 employees, opting for the service instead of the popular Microsoft Outlook.

“The road to its enterprise enlightenment has been long and bumpy, but Gmail should now be considered a mainstream cloud email supplier,” said Matthew Cain, research vice president at Gartner.

“While Gmail’s enterprise email market share currently hovers around 1 per cent, it has close to half of the market for enterprise cloud email. While cloud email is still in its infancy, at 3 per cent to 4 per cent of the overall enterprise email market, we expect it to be a growth industry, reaching 20 per cent of the market by year-end 2016, and 55 per cent by year-end 2020.”

Cain said that, other than Microsoft Exchange, Google Gmail is the only email system that has prospered in the enterprise space over the past several years. Other enterprise email providers — Novell GroupWise and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino — have lost market momentum, Cisco closed its cloud email effort and VMware’s Zimbra is only now refocusing on the enterprise space.

Google’s journey to enterprise enlightenment, however, is not complete. Google focuses on capabilities that will have the broadest market uptake. Large organisations with complex email requirements, such as financial institutions, report that Google is resistant to feature requests that would be applicable to only a small segment of its customers. Banks, for example, may require surveillance capabilities that Google is unlikely to build into Gmail given the limited appeal.

While Google is good at taking direction and input on front-end features, it is more resistant to the back-end feature requests that are important to larger enterprises. Large system integrators and organisations report that Google’s lack of transparency in areas such as continuity, security and compliance can thwart deeper relationships.

“Email is not a commodity, and cloud email is still maturing,” Cain said. “We believe that, for most organisations, performing one more on-premises upgrade, which will take an organisation through 2014, is the most prudent approach. A less-risky approach to cloud email is via a hybrid deployment, where some mailboxes live in the cloud and some are located on premises. This hybrid model plays to Microsoft’s strengths given its vast dominance of the on-premises email market.”

“The intense competition between Microsoft and Google will make both vendors stronger and enable them to apply cloud expertise to other enterprise cloud endeavours,” Cain said. “The rivalry will make it difficult for other suppliers to compete directly in the cloud email and collaboration space.”