Two years ago, in December of 2008, I published a Google Knol titled GMail and Google Calendar Sync with MS Exchange and Outlook Web Access. It chronicles my employer's choice to upgrade our University's email system from Lotus Notes, to Microsoft Exchange Server. It is a bit of a custom hybrid system with our student accounts being cloud hosted by Microsoft and our employee accounts being hosted locally on the University's Exchange Servers. It's been a fairly stable solution and things have been cruising along.
As a Google Cloud Dweller, I was able to put in my request to become a Google Apps for Education Campus, but the University chose to go with Exchange. Honestly, we really, really, really needed to get away from our 1990's Lotus Notes system so either choice was a sound one.
The University quickly crafted an Employee Policy requiring all university electronic communication between faculty, administrators, staff and students to use the Exchange email addresses, a policy that still stands today. There was, however, a bit of wiggle room in that the University's C-Level Executive Leadership and IT Departments standardized on RIM Blackberry mobile devices -- allowing for IMAP and POP3 symbiosis between our Exchange Servers and User Cloud Access Devices (UCADs). The Google Knol describes the steps one can use to link your GMail UCAD to Microsoft Exchange Server.
A bit surprisingly, the Knol has received over 130,000 visitors to date. Google Analytics reveals that not many folks are enthralled enough with its content to read the entire entry, but this number does reflect the number of folks that were looking for this type of information. The Knol of course overwhelms everything else I have linked to my Analytics account so when its visits vary the change is easy to detect. This past Fall, the number of visits started to decline steadily and visits are now down by 25% as illustrated in the Analytics graph below.
Analysis
So, the data being the data, what (if any) meaning does this have? I can think of a few possibilities:
- All of the folks interested in this task have already found a solution
- There are better sources for this solution available elsewhere
- Use of Outlook Web Access is increasing
- The number of GMail users needing to synchronize with MS Exchange is decreasing
- The number of GMail users is decreasing
I have my own personal bias that leads me to hypothesize on the correct answer, but I am interested in your thoughts on how to interpret the data. One of the possibilities I have listed? A combination of these possibilities? Additional possibilities not listed here?
I think 1, 3, and 4 are all very likely. We know that Gmail adoption (both in the enterprise and elsewhere) is increasing, but with new cloud-based offerings from Microsoft, web-based access to Exchange and Sharepoint are absolutely on the rise.
ReplyDeleteThe other factor you didn't mention? Facebook. The ubiquity and growing acceptance of Facebook in a variety of professional and personal settings is decreasing the utility of any sort of email. Millennials are entering the workforce and bringing their social sensibilities with them.
Just my $.02.
Chris Dawson
Whole-heartedly agree... Email is such a non-factor with the millennials that the old email cold warriors are receiving what they deserve - "meh". The game has changed so many times that it is difficult to even determine the number of teams, let along establish rules of engagement. Thanks for your comment. =]
ReplyDeleteWhole-heartedly agree... Email is such a non-factor with the millennials that the old email cold warriors are receiving what they deserve - "meh". The game has changed so many times that it is difficult to even determine the number of teams, let alone establish rules of engagement. Thanks for your comment. =]
ReplyDelete