Google Apps are Taking Off?

Some of you may be familiar with MailChannels' "PingedIn" service. Every night, we survey the mail servers of approximately half a million companies worldwide, using a proprietary algorithm to determine the kind of email server software they are using to receive email.

Recently I was reviewing historical data stretching back to mid-summer, when I noticed a strong trend:


The lime green line shows that there has been a 50% increase in the number of companies using Google to host their email. This is a really impressive rate of growth in what has been a fairly stagnant industry for the past few years.

Other interesting observations:

• The decline of software: more and more companies are outsourcing their edge email solution to someone else. The only exception we found to this rule was MXLogic, who appear to have lost about 5% of their customers since mid-summer (according to our data -- please don't sue us).
• The flattening of IronPort: There has been virtually no growth at all in IronPort's installed base since they were acquired by Cisco. That said, at least they haven't lost ground.
• Continuing high rate of churn: Not shown on the graph, but tracked by PingedIn is the rate at which companies move from one solution to another. We are continuing to see an approximately 20% annual churn rate in the email boundary market.

Now, even though Google's growth may appear spectacular, it should be taken with a grain of salt. There are more than 17,000 sites in our database running Barracuda email appliances. Google still has just 1800. But at their current rate of growth, Google should surpass Barracuda some time in 2010. By the same token, even though there are still 42,000 Sendmail sites in our database, at its current rate of decline, Sendmail will be all but extinct in 2015.

Okay, 2015 is a really long way away. Sendmail is going to be with us until the end of time.