Mimecast guns for growth with staff investment

Email archiving vendor announces staff recruitment drive, after hitting one million-user milestone

Email archiving vendor Mimecast is planning to ramp up its UK staffing levels as part of its quest to forge closer ties with the Microsoft community.

The London-based firm announced last month that one million people across the globe are now using its email management tools. Back in 2007, Mimecast had 100,000 users.

Meanwhile, it has also been working towards becoming the number-one companion product to Microsoft Exchange.

Speaking to ChannelWeb, Alan Kenny, UK general manager at Mimecast, said the firm has some way to go before it achieves its target in the UK.

"I think, because we have been in the market for a while now, there is a tendency for people to think we have saturated the market, but the reality is the UK market [for Mimecast] is huge," said Kenny.

"At the last count, there were 22 million Microsoft Exchange users in the UK and that is the scale of the opportunity that exists today."

To tap into this, the firm is focusing its efforts on getting Microsoft partners to use its products to support upgrades to Exchange 2010 and Office 365.

"We had a survey commissioned through Loudhouse Research, which revealed that 77 per cent of organisations are expecting to do a migration to Exchange 2010 or Office 365 in the next two years," said Kenny. "This is a 24-month opportunity and focal point for Mimecast."

The company is also investing in staff recruitment to bulk out its UK channel and customer service teams to support the growing numbers of people using and selling its products.

"The biggest thing we are doing is massively growing our internal channel team, which I expect to almost quadruple in size within the next 12 months, as the size of our channel grows," said Kenny.

"We are going to launch a devoted customer division, which will spend its time interacting with our customers to ensure they are enjoying the best user experience possible," he added.

Earlier today, Mimecast also announced that it was extending its mobile device product portfolio with the launch of its first Apple iPhone app, which allows device users to search and archive emails.

Its launch coincides with the rollout of the company's new licensing plan, which aims to help IT managers provide email archiving services to both BlackBerry and iPhone users within their organisations.

Peter Bauer, chief executive of Mimecast, said: "[This] builds on our existing mobile strategy, which enables organisations to increase mobile workforce productivity and agility within a secure environment.

"By extending our offering to the iPhone, and soon to other platforms, both large and small [companies] can ensure employees can remain productive, regardless of device or location."