Corporate Messaging in the 90s:
A VANs Perspective
by Alex Rassey, Infonet Services Corporation
Value Added Network (VAN) providers will play an ever increasing role by providing additional value added services in supporting a corporation's messaging infrastructure. Although VANs have historically concentrated on voice and data network services, they have an incentive to focus on adding value added services since network services themselves are fast becoming a commodity. VANs have found that value added services act as differentiators that pull additional network services as well as revenue in their own right. This approach helps ensure prosperity by preserving the install base and by attracting new customers. Continuing to add messaging value added services strategically makes sense since it complements standard VAN core services such as: relay (X.400 ADMD), mailbox, fax, and telex[1]. The value added services described below complete a corporation's true end-to-end messaging requirement by providing both function and benefit not found in all Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products. Additionally, VANs as perceived in the marketplace are a "neutral" provider and therefore have a unique opportunity to provide services on behalf of multiple business partners.
At this point in time, VANs have played a rather complacent role in messaging. Their core suite of services provide a useful, yet limited function. Perhaps more significantly for all messaging services, VANs do perform such important functions of: ensuring message delivery, message track and trace, arbitration, relay, all under the umbrella of 24 by 7 service and operation. A few of the more progressive providers have been incorporating technology to accommodate the more popular LAN mailers and in some yet rarer cases, host based e-mailers. But for VANs to play more than a spectator role, additional services are in order. For the future, bundled messaging services as well as a "cafeteria" style offering for selecting those services that complement an existing messaging infrastructure will become commonplace. But, before we proceed to describe what these services are, we need to first ascertain the target marketplace.
Continuing to add
messaging value added services
strategically makes sense since it complements
standard VAN core services.
The Marketplace
A VAN should strategically target value added messaging services for three types of markets. The first type is aimed at those companies where the VAN will be the provider of the core messaging services. These are companies that for various reasons lack: financing, the infrastructure, or the desire, etc. for an in-house messaging solution and choose to out-source their messaging needs. For companies in this category, the solution will be to subscribe to the appropriate core and value added services (as described below). The second market consists of those companies that already have a fairly robust messaging infrastructure. For them, selectively choosing the appropriate value added services will complement and enhance the existing messaging environment (i.e., the MTA as a commodity). The third market is targeted at enhancing inter-business communications. In this scenario, the VAN can provide, due to its "neutral" position, a specific set of services to a group of companies to enhance electronic interaction and communication.
The following is a "starter" set of the more important value added services. There are certainly more services that could be listed for consideration, however, for this discussion, only the higher priority ones are mentioned
Managed Mail Systems
With the proliferation of LAN based mailers, many customers are looking for management of their mail systems. For smaller topologies utilizing file share technology as in MS Mail and cc:Mail architecture, this would be a VAN service that would provide all capabilities to administer, manage, and maintain a post office at the VAN's location.
This managed P.O. could not only alleviate the internal burden (and all associated costs) of maintaining a premise P.O. it can be used for those customers with many geographically dispersed sites where no one site is capable or wants the responsibility. Additionally, with the increase in the nomadic work force, remote users could leverage the VAN's network access and dial-in to a professionally managed P.O. by (in most cases) placing a local call.
For larger topologies, scalability is the key. Messaging vendors have been quick to point out that for these environments, client/server architectures are more appropriate. As such, it would be important for a VAN to offer a professionally managed server (such as the NT platform for Microsoft exchange and a suitable high end platform for a Notes server) for access by the customer's mail clients.
Fixed Pricing
For most customers, defining a messaging strategy is only half the equation. To implement, management must be sold on the idea. One of the most affective ways to get buy-ins is to be able to provide deterministic monthly costs. VANs can assist their customers by instituting a flexible pricing structure that incorporates both a kilocharacter charge (for those customers who prefer billing on usage) and a fixed flat fee (per user, group, or site) charge that would allow a company to apply a fixed cost to the budget.
Message Store with High Speed LAN/WAN Access
With both the increase in remote users and larger sized attachments, a mailbox service that leverages message store technology (with accompanying transports) and the VAN's higher speed network service (X.25, IP, Frame Relay) is desirable.
Remote Management
Provide either a remote console or dial-in capability to management technology that would enable a customer to track and follow any message through the system. In addition, such a system should alert MIS personnel of a non-delivered message rather than the alert originating from an internal user.
Message Statistics
Provide a service so that customers can get detailed reports on message usage on a per user, per group or per company basis. Such reports would provide information on message size, sender, receiver (optional), and date and time.
Address Resolution Services
One of the most important areas to resolve for messaging environments is address resolution. Address Resolution Services (ARS) would provide both name resolution (probably through X.500) and directory synchronization. ARS could complement an existing messaging environment that lacks such capabilities or could be the service to a group of business partners who cannot have any one company responsible for owning and distributing the data. Of course this implies that these services would be highly secure and configurable on a per user, per group, per site, and per company basis. Additionally, popular entries should be cached to decrease response time.
Other Areas for Consideration
The following are two important areas that are not services onto themselves but are important when discussing the actual approach to offering a service.
Limit Premise Based Equipment
Certainly a major goal of VANs should be limit/eliminate premise based equipment when providing services. Of late, this concern has arisen when supporting LAN based mailers. The VAN should provide either fault tolerant or redundant LAN messaging equipment, and reliable technology at geographically strategic sites that are both secure and manageable.
The majority of VANs today still rely on premise based gateways, which eliminates the major advantages for a subscription service.
Standard Based Compliance
Unfortunately at this time we live in a world that promotes "simile" messaging. This has come about from software vendors (including the major supplier) who claim that some products are standards compliant, but when scrutinized discover that part of their "solution" may contain product descriptions with such phrases as "X.500 like" or "P7 like". In and by itself a customer may not care what the underlying technology is as long as the need is fulfilled. I would argue though that many suppliers are trying in a more clandestine fashion to lock you into their solution. And while the underlying compliance may not seem all that important, a cautious approach is warranted. From a VAN perspective this can be considered yet another opportunity to remain the neutral standards based messaging provider. While one may contend that a VAN would try to "lock" you in, I would contend that the long term attraction should be won based on superior performance and quality of the relationship.
Summary
The good news is that VANs are motivated to expand their messaging offering. After all, a messaging subscription usually pulls network services and that's additional revenue. Further, many VANs have come to the realization that network services are a commodity and know that differentiation through value added services is a necessity and not a nicety.
[1] Some of the more progressive providers are offering some LAN and host e-mail gateways.