December 22, 2005 IMs Challenge E-mail's Dominance By Antone Gonsalves Courtesy of While email remains the dominant form of electronic communications, its status is under attack by the use of instant messaging and the emergence of new communications technology, a research firm said Thursday. Email continues to dominate in most workplaces and homes, but is losing to among teens and young adults and within certain fast-paced work environments where immediate communication is needed, IDC said. As they get older, young people are expected to continue to use less email than today's adults. In addition, emerging web-based technologies, such as team workspaces, are expected to offer email alternatives. A workspace is a Web site in which people can post, read and download information at their own convenience. "It's not just instant messaging, but other collaborative technologies are challenging email," IDC analyst Mark Levitt said. Spam and viruses were at one time expected to cause erosion in email use, but studies have shown they haven't had a significant impact, Levitt said. Instead, people have used , filters and other security software. "While email has been bruised, it's emerged intact," Levitt said. "What people are thinking now is not how I can get rid of email, but how can I remain connected to email through mobile devices when I'm out of the office." Fulfilling the latter need and providing email software that does a better job at classifying, storing and organizing content, including documents sent as attachments, is how vendors can maintain email's status in electronic communications, Levitt said. In addition, email needs to continue to be integrated in more applications, so a person can send or receive messages without launching a separate client. Nevertheless, over the next 10 years, the volume of email is expected to decline, as new technologies offer alternatives for some of its uses, Levitt said. Today, however, the volume of corporate email continues to increase. In 2006, IDC estimates that the volume of business email will exceed 3.5 exabytes, which equals a billion gigabytes. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			AXS-One, OnSite E-Discovery Partner To Combine Compliance, Document Retention, E-Discovery And Litigation Support Morgan Stanley Muddles Through An E-Mail Mess Ignoring E-Mail Is A Sure Way To Lose Business First Look: Jabber XCP 5.0 Foldera Preps To Launch Web-application Suite Report: Demand Continues To Grow For E-mail Archiving     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.