In a spurt of year-end creativity, the research team at The Radicati Group took some time out of a very busy schedule and put put together our list of top 10 developments we observed in 2004--it's been quite a year. And next year will be no less exciting, as you'll see in our top 10 predictions for 2005.

Here are the top 10 stories of 2004:

1. The introduction of Google's email service, Gmail, offers 2GB of free storage. The beta was released on April Fool's Day, leaving many to believe it was a joke. The announcement kicked the Webmail market into high gear—other providers were forced to rethink their free-to-fee based business model, increase storage quotas, and find new ways to attract and keep subscribers.

2. The emergence of Spim (IM Spam) and IM viruses exposed the vulnerabilities of the various IM networks. The publicity of these threats triggered a boom in business for IM Management Vendors such as IMLogic and Facetime, who provide products designed to offer better IM security.

3. The threat of phishing, email fraud, and identity theft became very real in 2004. Not only did the volume of phishing attacks increase, but they become more sophisticated and difficult to identify. These types of attack, which are a form of spam, taught the world that spam is much more than a nuisance that can be ignored or deleted.

4. Symantec makes two bold acquisitions in 2004—Brightmail for anti-spam technology and Veritas for storage and backup technology. After the Veritas acquisition, Symantec becomes the world's fourth largest software company.

5. RSS technology becomes commonplace, allowing anyone with a web site the ability to syndicate content. A flurry of RSS aggregators emerge, giving users the ability to read web content in a fashion similar to email.

6. In 2004, it became apparent that full suite security appliances will be the way of the future, replacing stand-alone point solutions.

7. The Netsky virus caused headaches all year long, and continued as the #1 aggravator of security personnel and systems at the end of 2004.

8. Microsoft's Caller ID, Yahoo's Domain Keys, and SPF fueled intense debate over which anti-spoofing technology should emerge as the worldwide standard. Caller ID and SPF have been combined into the Sender ID framework, while DomainKeys continues to attract new partners. Uncertainty over which one will win out remains the predominant industry attitude.

9. For the first time, spammers were identified and taken to court by major service providers, such as Microsoft, Earthlink, AOL and Yahoo.

10. The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser, and a host of others emerged as a legitimate threat to Internet Explorer, which hasn't seen a new release since 2001 and is increasingly perceived as an insecure, outdated browser.

And now, here are the Radicati Group's 10 Predictions for 2005:

1. We expect IBM Lotus Notes/Domino to continue losing market share to MS Exchange and other players.

2. Phishing attacks will get worse before they get better.

3. Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news.

4. Microsoft will speed up development on the next version of Internet Explorer, and release an update before Longhorn (the current plan is to release the next version of IE with Longhorn in 2006).

5. Microsoft will enter the anti-virus market in a year when the severity of virus attacks will reach an all time high.

6. Biometrics will become the latest trend in security systems, for network access, desktop access, and physical building access.

7. Hosted Email providers will see strong growth, as more and more companies look to email as a service, considering the rising costs and complexity of in-house systems.

8. Google will introduce an IM client that will do surprisingly well.

9. IM Management vendors will continue to be the biggest winners in the IM space, as more and more companies will have a need for better IM security, archiving, and retrieval.

10. In the email archiving and compliance market, we expect consolidation of features in the form of all-in-one appliance solutions.

Sara Radicati, PhD is the founder, president and CEO of The Radicati Group, Inc., based in Palo Alto, Calif. For more information about the research firm, visit www.radicati.com.