Guest Blog by Philbert Shih, Structure Research
A few days ago, Yahoo announced that they enabled file storage and sharing through its email platform by partnering up with DropBox and integrating its file storage, management and collaboration capabilities.
Yahoo Mail users can now use DropBox when logged into their email accounts. Users can add any DropBox-hosted file to email messages and save attachements from email to their DropBox account. The integration can also be used as a way to get around sending huge attachments by email. Instead, users can share hosted DropBox folders through the new integrated interface.
Yahoo Mail is one of the big three email platforms (the other two being Google and Microsoft) that does not have integrated or complementary file and document sharing capabilities. It chose the partnership route to get there and this may at least be partially due to the fact it no longer has the development resources Zimbra provided when they acquired it in 2007. Back then Yahoo had identified the need but of course, had difficulty following through and ended up selling Zimbra to VMware. Partnering helps it play catch up and that is exactly where it is right now. It is behind in marketshare but most importantly has really lost mindshare.
DropBox recently acquired a startup called Mailbox in a sign that it wants to become more involved with the inbox rather than just the hard drive. It is likely to take some of the Mailbox technology in the direction of file storage and management (in the context of the inbox) and partnering with Yahoo gets it in front of the world’s third largest email footprint. That should help take adoption up a notch.
What does this development tell us?
Two things: 1) email continues to shift away from being a standalone application/service. People want to share files, media and collaborate. Email is a platform not just for messaging but for managing all the content, contacts and calendaring in people’s lives – across both the personal and professional sides of life; and 2) Hosters that sell email, collaboration, storage and backup have to look at bridging those services together. Having these services talk to each other is a huge driver of value. More integration is the wave of the future – which is exactly to route that Open-Xchange is taking.
Disclosure: Open-Xchange is a Structure Research subscriber.
