Giga's Penn, however, predicts the success of encryption outsources like ZixMail and competitors like PrivateExpress (http://www.privateexpress.com/), Wellance (http://www.regedoc.co.uk/en/index_about.html), and Tumbleweed (http://www.tumbleweed.com) will be limited as long as they force users to remain within their communities.
"Maybe they'll end up with a nice small business, with a half million users," says Penn. "But they won't become standard. There's limited opportunity because there are no good solutions now."
Forrester's Prince agrees. He thinks that ZixMail may gain some momentum with small customers and those without intricate IT departments, like law firms and new dotcoms. But larger companies, Price predicts, will decide that outsourcing such an integral solution is too much of a hassle.
"The technology isn't special," he says, "it's simply a redesign. Once the market stabilizes, the large organizations' [system] design teams could work with the [encrypted] e-mail providers and develop a solution that works for them."
