META outline organisational email priorities

As electronic communication vehicles like email, instant messaging, and web conferencing continue to grow, organisations will need to create a secure and low-cost infrastructure to tackle new challenges.

That is according to analysts META Group, which has issued what it considers to be the top 10 email concerns (in order of importance) organisations will need to address by 2007. They are as follows:- Stability: Organisations will upgrade infrastructures to bring system reliability to 100% during business hours. - Security/hygiene: Spam will not go away, but will be controlled via various filtering techniques. Multiple email hygiene services will be batched together by vendors to handle denial-of-service attacks, mail loops, virus/spam protection, harvest-attack abatement, content blocking, and policy management. - Centralisation: The centralisation movement, coupled with an emphasis on stability and hygiene, will lead organisations to apply data centre operational disciplines to email. - Encrypted email: By 2007, a combination of simplified public/private key distribution and rigid policy enforcement will largely resolve this issue.- Records retention: Organisations will increasingly use a mixture of client/server and gateway-based policy enforcement tools centred on adherence to governmental and corporate records management and archival requirements. - Mailbox overload: The end-user mailbox overload issue will be alleviated somewhat by filters and tools, which will help prioritise and categorise incoming email. - Mobility: IT groups will continue to be challenged to provide email services to a growing crop of diverse mobile devices, including pagers, cell phones, and PDAs. - Upgrades: Microsoft will deliver an Exchange version based on SQL Server, representing a major change from the current Web Store database.- Rightsizing: Organisations will have a good grasp of email economics by 2007, and will actively drive down costs via centralisation and standardisation. - Knowledge management: Knowledge management services for email will help users identify in-house expertise, discover existing relevant research, and formulate process best practices."During the next four years, e-mail will unquestionably become more deeply entrenched, more valuable, and therefore more critical to the well-being of the organisation," said Matt Cain, vice president with META Group's Technology Research Services. "By 2007, email priorities will have changed dramatically from existing concerns such as spam blockage and policy enforcement, to a focus on stability and security."

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