Market View: December

This article continues our market view series, where we look into the macro and micro-environments, the politics, economics, trends, and technological advances that create the opportunities and challenges that we need to navigate in our market.

The TL;DR:

Despite AWS data sovereignty headlines, and evolving data privacy legislation, Atmail’s global footprint provides adequate sovereignty for existing customers.

Telcos and Internet Service Providers who are focused on “costs” and do not actively maintain and modernise their email service continue to see a decline in usage and will explore exiting the service. This “cost mindset” directly contrasts the reality – that email continues to provide Telcos with revenue opportunities within the consumer market. AT&T’s partnership with Yahoo! to offer ad-supported and ad-free, but paid, email services is a simple example of a modern business model that works in the consumer market.

The arrival of decentralised email services, and the potential legal precedents that the NRC’s legal case could set against Google, are interesting market developments to monitor.

Microsoft’s move to drop support for custom domains for outlook.com customers is bold. Even more so when contrasted against Apple’s vaunted iCloud+ offering and Google bowing to customer feedback and reverting plans to make legacy G Suite customers pay for this functionality. Atmail’s family domain functionality aligns with market momentum, making this decision from Outlook one of interest to monitor.

General Interest Tech News

• Amazon AWS acknowledge that they are behind Google and Microsoft in sovereign cloud – offering a pledge to offer the most advanced sovereignty controls and features available in cloud services. (Read more)
• In November, Google reached a $392M settlement with 40 US states for breaching location tracking regulations. Meta has been fined $275M for breaching GDPR. (Read more)

Industry News

• ATC Broadband to end its email service in March 2023. (Read more)
• The Republican National Committee will sue Google, alleging the company has been suppressing email solicitations ahead of the November mid-term elections. (Read more)
• Avanan release a study that claims attackers are designing email phishing attacks to bypass Microsoft anti-abuse services, and they are winning. (Read more)
• AT&T partner with Yahoo! to offer an ad-supported email service. Removing advertisements requires a $5 per month subscription. (Read more)
• Hargray Communications to end its email service with the first round of account deletions scheduled for December 15th. (Read more)
• Microsoft announce their intention to discontinue support for adding and using custom domain names with Outlook.com. Existing custom domains will continue to function. (Read more)
• Fjordmail enforce subscription for webmail.co.za (Read more)
• Zoom’s email and calendaring services will allow users to integrate with existing Microsoft or Google accounts, or use Zoom backend services. Ensuring users can collaborate holistically from within the one app. (Read more)
• With the goal of decentralising email, three former bank employees have developed Telios – a privacy-focused web3 email service built on the Hypercore Protocol for peer-to-peer communication. (Read more)
• At the time of writing, Rackspace’s Exchange Online service has been down for five days and counting… (Read more)

Synacor Zimbra

• Zimbra release a partner-exclusive desktop mail client “Zimbra Desktop Modern” with offline capability. (Read more)
• Zimbra release support for Thales’ SafeNet Trusted Access (SSO). (Read more)

Synchronoss

• Synchronoss announce an unnamed leading global operator has signed a multi-year deal for Personal Cloud files to securely store video, and other digital content. (Read more)
• Synchronoss announce increased adoption of Verizon’s Next Generation Private Cloud Infrastructure. (Read more)
• Synchronoss report 3rd quarter financial results. In comparison to Q3 2021:
  • Messaging revenue was down 4.6%.
  • Total revenue was down 14%.
  • Gross profit decreased 12%.
  • Adjusted EBITDA decreased 7%.
  • Net loss improved to $(1.3)M. ($0.01) per share. (Read more)

Open-Xchange

• OX partners with Bigdomain and DotAsia to provide secure email and collaboration tools for Malaysia. (Read more)
• OX partners with MailChannels to integrate their anti-abuse technology within OX Cloud. (Read more)

Atmail

• During December, Atmail have shipped multiple features and service improvements, including:
  • A new interface that fully meets WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA guidelines
  • App-specific password functionality
  • Multiple technology stack upgrades
• We are targeting the following feature releases in the coming weeks:
  • Import and export of contacts via .csv (early February)
  • Enhanced password policy controls to regulate password re-use (early March)
  • Maintenance Page – allows you to control access to webmail during defined maintenance periods. (Feb/Mar)
  • Email Broadcast – allows you to send notification emails to all users on your webmail domain. (Feb/Mar)

If you would like to discuss any of the above further, or if you have any other queries, then please contact me.