Keynote EMA'99:
The Great Debate
with Lotus, Microsoft & Netscape
(Originally published in Messaging Magazine, January/February 1999)

By Sven James, CompuSven, Inc.
  

During EMA'99, to be held March 30th through April 1st, 1999, at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas, Texas, you will have the unique opportunity to witness one of the most important corporate communications debates that has come along in many years. "The Great Debate." A debate among the leaders in Messaging: Lotus (Domino/Notes clients), Microsoft (Exchange/Outlook clients) and Netscape (Messaging Server/Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4)/Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) clients). The purpose of the debate is to give you specific information that will help you choose which messaging system is right for your company. The debate will be technical, the questions specific and pointed, and to ensure questions are really answered, Joyce Graff from the Gartner Group will moderate.

The Great Debate came about because of the large number of companies currently choosing between these specific messaging products. Your company may be fortunate, and may already be in the process of rolling out one of these products. If so, EMA'99 will also offer migration and coexistence strategies, plus real user stories that will help you successfully deploy your chosen solution.

You've heard the battle cries: "Lotus Notes is the best Groupware solution," "Microsoft Exchange is the simplest to implement," or "Netscape Messaging Server is completely standards-based." What do these statements really mean? Are they marketing hype? The debate will help clarify some of these issues, just to mention a few.

The timing of this debate is critical. Companies have mandates to move to a new e-mail system for many reasons. One of the major reasons is Y2K compliance. The majority of companies are evaluating whether upgrading their existing legacy mail system to a Y2K compliant release is the best solution, versus moving to a Notes, Exchange or Messaging Server solution. A number of companies, therefore, have deadlines in place that dictates that migration of all users must take place by December 31, 1999. That means that they have to start the rollout of the new messaging system now! In addition to the Y2K issues, companies are also choosing new messaging systems because they want to take advantage of features that may not be available in their legacy system.

These features range from:

• A simple, consistent Graphical User Interface (GUI) interface (point and click)
• A full featured editor (fonts/colors, spellchecker, tables, bullets, etc.)
• Easy access to directories (click on a directory button and access the corporate directory
• Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) support (drag, drop and mail any data type)
• Standards support/ability to use client of choice: IMAP4, POP3 access
• Attachments support
• Integrated calendaring
• Integrated support for Internet protocols such as http, ftp, and news
• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) conversion
• Intelligent forms
• Groupware capability to allow for collaborative computing
• Enhanced printing ability for color and graphics
• Plus lots of bells and whistles (the sizzle factor) such as:
  • Synchronization with palm held computers
  • Seamless remote access from laptops (for the quickly growing number of road warriors and remote workers)
  • Instant messaging
  • The ability to quickly integrate other applications already on the PC, or within the distributed computing environment
  • Fax and voice mail integration
  • Built in database access

This debate could feature other messaging product providers. However, most "large messaging shops of the world" have already narrowed down the selection of their next e-mail system to Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange or Netscape Messaging Server. Other outstanding messaging products are offered by Oracle, Fischer International Systems Corporation, Novell, ISOCOR, Control Data, HP, SUN, plus many others. Each of these could become contenders over the coming years.

Choosing your next messaging system is one of the single most important "Information Systems" decisions that your company will make. It is a decision that your company will live with for a long time. Ten, possibly twenty years! (How long has PROFS been around?). Look at how long your mainframe e-mail systems and other legacy systems have been around.

A number of companies are also in the position of having to upgrade dumb terminals such as 3270s to PCs. One problem is that the cost of upgrading all 3270 to PCs or even network workstations is prohibitive. The debate may not touch on this, but it is an issue that should be addressed when considering what users can be moved and when.

The corporate world today depends on e-mail. In a broader term, messaging. Messaging has become a way of life within the corporate structure. Messaging establishes corporate communications culture and has become the tool of choice for a variety of tasks. Messaging is no longer e-mail only. Messaging has become its own sub-system. Messaging has almost become an operating system, a mission critical corporate operating system.

In the beginning, messaging was called e-mail. But today, messaging encompasses and touches so many applications that it is difficult to determine where messaging starts and the messaging infrastructure ends. For example, messaging without a directory would not work, and with the move toward directory consolidation, the messaging vendors are moving quickly to support such standards as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

There are, today, multitudes of messaging applications that, as a whole, define messaging. These include, but are certainly not limited to the following applications:

• E-mail and message management: send, read, file, print, reply, forward, etc.
• Directory access, integration and administration
• Calendaring: scheduling, free busy time searches, resource scheduling
• Forms, workflow, intelligent e-mail
• Mail enabled applications: the convergence of users and applications peripheral to messaging that need to be mail enabled (i.e., data stored in "other databases").
• Corporate communications: from broadcast messages to use of distribution lists
• Groupware and collaborative computing, public bulletin boards and forums
• Instant messaging
• Fax and voicemail integration
• Simple importing/exporting data
• Support of "Standards" to allow greater access and true use of "client of choice" (i.e., IMAP4, POP3, Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Secure MIME (S/MIME), LDAP, X.500, etc.)
• Migration and coexistence applications that provide interfaces to other e-mail systems.

Although the debate will not be able to thoroughly cover each and every one of these topics, and there are certainly messaging topics missing from this list, the above list and the coming Great Debate may help you create a starting point for the most important decisions that need to be made. Such issues as scalability, performance, ease of use and administration, support of standards, cost of ownership, will addressed in the debate.

Messaging is mission critical. If your messaging system goes down, the hallways fill and corporate communications literally come to a standstill. Sound familiar? Which of the messaging vendors in this debate have the infrastructure in place to support your messaging system today and as you grow? This debate will provide you with the information about each company's support infrastructure. Do these companies really have the ability to support a messaging environment to ensure that it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Do the vendors get it? Can they really deliver?

You are probably being provided information from each of the messaging vendors on which solution they recommend and you may be fortunate to have unbiased information from independent research firms. This information will help you determine which system is really the best for your corporation. But which messaging product is the right solution for your company? Each product is really a complex system with its own benefits and complexities. Which one is the easiest to use and deploy within your organization? Which one provides the most time effective training for your company? How does each system scale? How many users can I really run on a server? What are the hardware requirements? What are the real costs of ownership, including administration? Does the hardware platform matter? Is performance an issue? How important is immediate delivery of mail? What gateways are offered? What about gateway monitoring tools? What kind of performance can I expect from my gateways?

The debate, although limited to two hours will tackle as many issues as possible. Real pragmatic business issues will be addressed during the debate, and although the specific format of the debate is not yet finalized, there will be questions that will be asked by the moderator, and questions will be taken from the audience upon entrance to the debate. The panel may even answer your specific question. The representatives will all be high level people from within their organizations who have the ability to speak "technical e-mail" and "English."

Messaging defines your corporate culture. It will determine how you communicate in the next millennium. It will determine the standards you use, and will become part of your overall business infrastructure. You will build and automate business processes around it. This is one time when you will truly be able to see, hear, and possibly, pose your own questions to the leaders in messaging. From this event, you can have significant impact upon your business and the corporate culture that will result from it. Don't miss it!

EMA gratefully acknowledges CompuSven as the sponsor of the EMA'99 Keynote: The Great Debate.