Half of All Email Systems will be Replaced in Two Years

Today, Zimbra announced the results of the Ponemon Institute’s “The Open Source Collaboration Study: Viewpoints on Security and Privacy in the U.S. and EMEA” report. Sponsored by Zimbra, the study surveyed 1,398 IT and IT security practitioners to learn about their companies’ involvement in the use of open source messaging and collaboration solutions, and their views on security and privacy.

According to the survey, the majority of information security and technology professionals aren’t happy with their current collaboration software, the majority of which are proprietary solutions from Microsoft and Google. And over 50 percent of US and EMEA survey respondents are planning to replace their solution within two years.

When selecting a new solution, the U.S. and EMEA agreed on four of the five most important factors in selecting a messaging and collaboration solution: vendor support, open source, the ability to host or manage solution in the cloud and improved security. However, there were differing views on the most important factor, US respondents considered ease of use the most important factor, where as, EMEA respondents considered vendor reputation the most important factor.

While both U.S. and EMEA IT professionals agree open source is a top five factor in the selection of a solution, the current adoption of open source is low. Only 30 percent of US and 25 percent of EMEA business applications are open source (extrapolated value). Despite the low adoption, the beneficial attributes of open source are well understood. Perceptions are changing relative to the most important attribute, with lowering cost no longer considered the main differentiator of open source software; business continuity, control and quality rank above cost.

In fact, according to the report, all respondents either agree or strongly agree that open source is better than proprietary software in all six major attributes measured.

Source: Ponemon Institute, Zimbra. “The Open Source Collaboration Study: Viewpoints on Security and Privacy in the US and EMEA.” 2014

“One of the most interesting survey results was the slow adoption of open source messaging and collaboration software, despite IT professionals’ resounding trust in open source software,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. “With the majority of deployments being proprietary solutions and the sentiment largely negative, I would expect to see increased interest in new solutions that are based on commercial open source.”

The report has a lot of great information on messaging and collaboration, open source, security and privacy. If you are interested in reading the full report, please visit Zimbra.com.