There is a great deal of buzz around new ways to communicate that seek to replace email as the main form of collaboration in the workplace.  From text messaging to more social approaches like blogs and RSS.  Love it or hate it, email is entrenched in the daily habits of millions of workers all over the world.  Here’s my take on why:

• Email is ubiquitous – everybody has at least one email address and, more importantly, knows how to use it.  Even more importantly, most everyone they know has an email address (reference the evolution of fax machine adoption) and knows how to use it
  
• Email is (mostly) free – in corporate environments, there is no direct cost associated with sending or receiving an email as it is a service provided by IT where the costs are more indirect (bandwidth, labor, storage, etc.).  Also, I am not including "consequence" costs like e-discovery, litigation, liability, etc.  From a web mail perspective (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) perspective, there is no cost to not only sending and receiving, but to having access.
  
• Email is trusted – there is an assumption that unless a message bounces back as undeliverable that it made it to the recipient and they have it in their Inbox.  Spam and other malicious types of messages are still out there but, while still a nuisance, most corporate messaging folks I deal with think this has been addressed (meaning no need to buy something else as what they have is "good enough")
  
• Email is formal – at its core an email is a business record in a corporate environment and a more official or serious way to communicate versus more causal means like IM
• Email is flexible – content, attachments, format, recipients, & purpose are all left in the hands of the sender to configure/customize/personalize

Fred Wilson did a post on "What Trumps Email?" that lays out a great framework for analysis.

I’m going to take a look at the other forms of communication both established and emerging and their fit as an alternative or even replacement for email in the enterprise in upcoming posts.