Email Strategy Profile: Microsoft

Synopsis: Due to the success of its on-premise, client/server email solution, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft has come to dominate the enterprise email market in recent years. With the launch of Office 365 in 2011, the company is also now targeting the cloud email market, while offering customers the flexibility of a "hybrid" approach to email which combines both on-premise and cloud-based services.

Key messages:

• Microsoft is one of the longest standing players in the enterprise email market, having first entered the market in 1991 when it acquired the second largest email provider at the time, Consumer Software.
• While Microsoft was not the earliest to introduce a cloud email solution, its offering today suggests a carefully composed strategy which combines the company's expertise in the enterprise email market, with its own – and others' – experience in the cloud solutions space.
• A key strength of Microsoft’s email solutions is the high degree of integration it provides with other products (both hosted and on-premise) in the Microsoft collaboration and office productivity portfolio.
• Office 365 has a complicated pricing model.
• The high cost of migration or upgrade to Exchange 2010 is a potential threat to Microsoft, as it will in many cases be the catalyst for the customer to consider its options other than Exchange, particularly cloud-based alternatives from other vendors.