Here's what Ferris Research thinks will be the main projects/issues that messaging managers will be concerned with in 2006. They are in rough order of priority for the typical organization.

• Implementing Email Archiving & Retention. The main issues are determining regulatory requirements, defining policies to implement, product selection, ensuring compliance, records management and disaster recovery.
  
• Dealing With Email Overload. Many people are out of control of their mix of tasks, and are frustrated. We haven't worked out how to live well with email, and the tools from vendors are still poor
  
• Mobile Messaging Deployment. Implementing a cost-effective, secure method of doing this, while controlling support efforts
  
• "Zero Hour" Virus Control. Viruses that arrive before their corresponding signatures have been developed and deployed will become a larger problem
  
• Spam Control. This continues to be a problem, and organizations will continue to move to different spam control solutions
  
• Phishing Control. These are fraudulent attempts to get you to part with sensitive information, often via a website but also through email and instant messages. Messaging staff will have to find hardware and software solutions
  
• Instant Messaging Implementation. Enterprises will need to decide whether to use secure, in-house, IM deployments or continue to use free, public instant messaging services. Common concerns will be containing the growth of public solutions, capturing content for regulatory compliance, and protection from viruses and spam
  
• Teamspaces: Learning and Planning. SharePoint is stimulating a lot of interest in this area as an alternative to simple file servers. 2006 will be an important year in that many people will experiment with the technology, and get familiar with the concepts
  
• Consumer Messaging Functionality & Cost. CIOs are asking why their "enterprise" collaboration systems seem so much more restrictive, cost so much more to operate and seem to be so much less reliable than "consumer" collaboration systems. This is a question that messaging managers will need to begin answering in 2006.
  
• Upgrades & Migrations. Migrating between email systems takes a lot of resources. So do upgrades to major new versions of an email system

There are other topics we felt are likely to be important issues for messaging managers in 2006, but which didn't quite make it into our Top Ten. Here they are:

• Email management
  
• Search
  
• Handling Larger Attachments
  
• VoIP
  
• Wikis
  
• RSS/Atom

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.ferris.com/
www.ferris.com/view_content.php?o=Other&id=1367

View printable version (opens in new window)
Back