EMA'99
The Great Debate
by Sven James, CompuSven, Inc.
(Originally published in Messaging Magazine, July/August 1999)

The Great Debate took place March 30, 1999 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Dallas, Texas. The debate was sponsored by CompuSven, Inc., and moderated by Joyce Graff of the Gartner Group, with the following participants (in company alphabetical order):

• Steve Lewis—Senior Director of Product Strategy and Business Development, Lotus Development Corp.
• Eric Lockard—General Manager, Exchange Server Business Unit, Microsoft Corporation
• Korak Mitra—General Manager, Messaging Server, Netscape Corporation

In order to really understand the positions and opinions of the participants of the Great Debate it is recommended that you watch the videotape or listen to the audio tape of the debate. For those of you who prefer a condensed summary of the debate, this article is for you. Please note though that the debate condensed down questions to less than 2 1/2 hours and that this article has again cut down on the content and number of issues that could be covered. The Great Debate was truly the First Debate. It showed us all that large messaging products have become critical to business, and the debate demonstrated just how much messaging really does affect each one of us.

The debate itself was trumpeted as a debate among the leaders in messaging. It was a time and place for the participants to define and differentiate their company’s products and messaging architectures and philosophies. It is interesting that each of the three products were built on very different philosophies. Each product is today one of the leading messaging products; however, each product was built upon a foundation and philosophy very different from the others.

Lotus Notes really started out as a "groupware" product (that soon became knowledgeware and collaborative computing). A product that by its inherent database architecture lends itself well to any application that involves interaction with other people and applications. Distributed or centralized, the platform independence, replication and ease of application development, and web integration have given us what Notes is today. Messaging was not an afterthought for Lotus; however, the Notes messaging client did evolve out of the database paradigm.

Microsoft Exchange started its virtual life as a messaging hub, directories, and public folders intended for use in the enterprise. Integration with the Microsoft Office suite, including the Microsoft Outlook client, has made Exchange a great back end for messaging users. With Exchange 5.5, Microsoft began adding collaborative functionality into Exchange to help customers build rich collaborative solutions on their messaging platform.

Netscape created their client and server based on standard protocols rather than initially solving business problems and providing functionality. Based on the standards available, Netscape allows use of their back end or front end products. Their platform independence (except there is no server on the mainframe) allows companies to run Netscape Messaging Server on virtually any operating system. Because standards will always lack behind customer demands, Netscape has staked a ground that is defined by standards rather than immediate functionality.

Corporations obviously need this differentiation. Each company uses messaging software to solve business problems. The problems range from a simple intra-company correspondence to full-blown corporate calendaring and true group collaboration. Companies simply need products that are better, faster, and more cost efficient that enable employees to generate revenue. As stated by Steve Lewis during the debate, increasing revenue is the goal of all corporations.

There are, of course, more than the three messaging systems discussed during the Great Debate. There are many more vendors. At EMA2000, we hope to bring you a view that will provide other vendors a forum for their leading edge technology and information about actual message system deployment. Five years ago the leaders in messaging were (in random order) cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, Office Vision for MVS and VM, Fischer International’s Emc2/TAO and Verimation’s Memo. Sure these products are all still in use, but each company is completely redesigning their messaging solution because customers have demanded change. The corporate desktop has changed and the distributed server is growing up. From security to features such as calendaring, administration, application development, etc., they all make up what we all call "messaging."

The three participating vendors each have their own unique Messaging Philosophy. Each company has brilliant designers, programmers, product managers, and personnel. However, each of these companies are each searching to solve your business problems based on the architecture contained in the solution their company offers today. It is in everyone’s best interest to push for solutions to solve business problems and then have the vendors provide you with their solution so that you can compare them and then move forward with the philosophy and infrastructure that you believe is best suited for your company.

This debate was broadcast on the Web using www.tvontheweb.com and the archive of the debate can still be viewed at http://www.tvontheweb.com/live/ema033099/indexarchive.html#Video%20Archive

During the debate, 5 chat rooms were open, each with approximately 20 users.

The Melissa and Papa viruses hit the weekend before Tuesday’s debate.

The Great Debate Summary

Joyce Graff introduced the debate with a quote that is as relevant to this article as it was to the debate. She said "…none of these is a bad choice; they’re all good products, but one of them will probably fit your circumstances better than another one or perhaps it will be a better fit for some segment of your user than another one. We all have different kinds of users who themselves have different requirements."

This article is written to provide you with an objective perspective on what was said during the debate. Some sentences contain fragments in an effort to bring you as much information in the minimum amount of space.

The debate was divided into four logical sections that would probe the participant’s minds in regards to the solution they were representing. These sections were Opening Positions, Strategic Vendor Differentiation, Cost of Ownership, and Closing Statements.

Opening Positions

Eric Lockard (Microsoft) "‘Data Communications’ (magazine) published the results of a standards based shootout… The standards as they exist today are insufficient, and that’s why you see the leading enterprise vendors basically providing capabilities that go well beyond standards."

Steve Lewis (Lotus) "There are times when your primary goal is interoperability." He continued to state "many of you would not be able to survive day in, day out on the basis of standards that exist in some of the more limited messaging systems that are out there today…a healthy balance between proprietary, and I mean that in the most positive sense of the word, where innovations lead and you deliver value." Steve also referenced the Data Com review stating that "we were very pleased."

A discussion of ICAL reflected the relative youth of the standard, but it became clear that all three vendors were committed to providing client and server side support for ICAL. The client will initially contain the support with the server side of the application coming in a future release.

Joyce Graff mentioned "by 2004 there are actually going to be more hand-held devices looking for e-mail services than there are PC’s. So what is your vision for Mass Access Devices (MAD) and what role does standards play in that?"

Eric Lockard (Microsoft) stated that Microsoft is "investing tremendous energy into this area for the next release of Exchange Server, code name Platinum… flow control, throttling, so you don’t swamp the devices." Eric continued "you don’t want to have a special purpose wireless protocol; you want it to be HTTP or whatever…Windows CE group that’s focused on providing a micro-browser, for handset manufacturers to include their devices, and we’re going to give that away, give the source code away." A note was made by Joyce Graff that MAPI support is not part of Windows CE.

Korak Mitra (Netscape) brought up the relationship between AOL, Netscape and Sun. He noted that they were "doing a number of things around working with JINI and thin client devices…working with Palm and 3-Com" and that "the Palm VII is using a Netscape infrastructure messaging and directory for its back end."

Steve Lewis (Lotus) discussed Lotus strategy by stating that Lotus was "aiming, as part of support for Microsoft’s environment to try to bring a full function Outlook client against our server." In regards to palm based devices he continued to say "…we have the ability already to have a whole range of devices go directly against our servers, whether it be wireless based or by the LAN. And we’re not just thinking about productivity from a mail or calendaring perspective; you want to take your apps with you too…IBM has a very significant investment in pervasive computing… we’re part of that hardware company."

Melissa and Papa Virus

Melissa and Papa hit the weekend before the show. The Melissa Virus was a word document with an imbedded macro. Although specifically targeted at Outlook users, the issue of viruses is one that no vendor is really immune to. The responses from the participants demonstrates the seriousness of the virus issue and underscores how important that end-to-end message system protection is key in the ever going battle with hackers.

Eric Lockard (Microsoft) stated "The best you can do is protect yourself against these viruses at all stages in your infrastructure, at the gateway, with the Internet. At Microsoft, when this virus showed up on Friday, by Saturday we had the tools to clean it out of Exchange, and various virus vendors or virus inoculation vendor like Trend Micro…were updating their detection software."

Korak Mitra (Netscape) emphasized the "endless race going on between the hackers and the vendors."

Steve Lewis (Lotus) agreed that "we all need to do better…if you gave the chance to back up their data to end users it never happens and the first backup they do is the day after their thing fell over and that would train them."

Bottom line: Take virus detection out of user’s hands and implement end-to-end virus detection and fighting solutions.

Joyce Graff mentioned that the long-term viability of IBM/Lotus and Microsoft is never questioned by the corporate world, however, there are questions about Netscape’s future. Specifically "If I buy a client from Netscape, will they still be making that client in two years? What level of support can an enterprise buyer expect from Netscape?"

Korak Mitra (Netscape) responded "Today we’re announcing a strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems… the software people at Sun and Netscape are creating a new, essentially joint venture type of company…we’re doubling the resources to over 350 development folds with access to 1,500 field folks…the contribution from the AOL side is to provide a very large consumer audience that you can actually sell things to." Korak went on to mention that "you’ll be seeing new messaging server products shipping in April and then, in June and you’ll see new calendar server products throughout this year."

Strategic Vendor Differentiation

Eric Lockard (Microsoft): "We do have modern transaction log-based architecture. It is the most scaleable, most fault tolerant. R5 will not catch up in this area. We are really designed for the enterprise. If you look at the scale of deployments that are out there, Exchange is it." He continued to praise Exchange by stating that it had the widest selection of native connections to other systems that we provide in the box… Availability…transactional architecture… dedicated management client…great interfaces…lowest TCO…integration with Windows 2000 and the Active Directory."

Security

The discussion on security demonstrated the importance of vendor interoperability and cooperation between the vendors. The key problem area was cited as user certificate revocation procedures.

Steve Lewis (Lotus): "public key infrastructure in Domino, even in its first release, and that product back then was pretty much built on proprietary protocols and data formats, because really nothing else existed. The last couple of years has really seen our transition to adopting the mainstream Internet-based security models… Microsoft has done some excellent work in Outlook from a certificate support perspective. We’ve done the same. Obviously Netscape has had a very strong position in that space…you’re now getting to a point whereby being able to send an encrypted mail message from one platform to another is really becoming reality, to be able to sign documents is really becoming reality."

Eric Lockard (Microsoft): "We’ve come to the point where SMIME and X509-B3 certificate formats are becoming the ubiquitous standard for PKI infrastructure. It’s a dual certificate system. The advantages of this kind of system are that the key that you use for your digital signature never leaves the workstation."

Korak Mitra (Netscape): "I think we’ve obviously played a fairly strong role in Internet-based security, and for example, obviously the whole SSL thing came originally from Netscape…we’ve made our LDAP directory the center of the deployability of certificates, and there’s a lot of things that users have to do in today’s certificate models that the directory can do for you automatically."

Support

Support is becoming more critical every day. As the number of users increase so too does the importance of the internal help desk. This eventually translates into the support that every company can expect from each of the vendors.

Steve Lewis (Lotus): "messaging has evolved and become just such a critical infrastructure in a business, expectations of customers have grown inordinately. And so I think a philosophy we’re trying to adopt is what IBM has."

Eric Lockard (Microsoft): "We have a great support organization, both within Microsoft and with our strategic business partners, Compaq and HP and so on, for Exchange in particular…You can always get someone on the phone. And we have this range of support options, everything from incident by incident all the way to a dedicated technical account manager."

Korak Mitra (Netscape): "Netscape about twelve months ago started dramatically strengthening its support organization… We’re going to be strengthening the support offering quite dramatically over the next year…we instituted support offerings that were dedicated to customers onsite, and everything in between…workarounds for severity one type problems within 24 hours and having fixes within usually a week."

Cost of Ownership

As part of the discussion of Total Cost of Ownership it became very clear that each company has its own model and a book could literally be written on what TCO truly is within each organization. It will depend on the hardware, number of users, existing infrastructure, help desk capabilities, etc. Lotus and Microsoft agreed to the statement by Steve Lewis: "…if I run a business, I’m not going to be focusing on the beans; I’m going to be focusing on driving revenue. And, in that case, you look for adding value to your messaging systems and you get out of these nits. I think you need to focus more on the strategic value of return, the high value app, than looking just a low commodity items."

Closing Statements

Back to Table of Contents