Exchange 5.5's Ripple Effects
In 1996, Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 came into the world after an extended gestation period. The year 1997 saw Exchange 5.0 embrace the Internet. What will Exchange 5.5 bring in 1998? Here are the trends that my crystal ball predicts for this year.
First, Exchange's war against Lotus and Netscape continues. Exchange had a tenfold increase in user numbers during 1997 (to 7.2 million seats), but Lotus Notes also doubled its installed base. Netscape's attempts to enter the corporate messaging market have largely been blunted by both Lotus and Microsoft incorporating support for important Internet messaging protocols into their products. Exchange now boasts free connectors for both cc:Mail and Notes, and companies in which Notes has a presence will find it easier to introduce Exchange. Exchange includes migration utilities for cc:Mail (albeit not cc:Mail 8), and companies such as the Mesa Group (http://www.mesa.com) can port Notes applications.
Exchange 5.5 supports the major Internet protocols and has incorporated high-end features, such as those used to control Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCEcommonly known as spam), directly into the product. Post Office Protocol (POP) 3 and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) 4 clients, including Microsoft's Outlook Express, can connect easily to Exchange, and Web browsers are better served now that the Outlook Web Access supports calendaring. The question competing vendors have to ask is, "Where are the gaps in the Exchange armor?"
Expect the fight to continue in 1998. I feel that Exchange will begin to erode the Lotus-installed base more aggressively than ever before. As for Netscape, I can't see how its fragmented suite of server products can compete with Exchange, unless UNIX is the operating system; for UNIX systems, Exchange is not even at the party.
Companies that have been deploying Exchange for years have probably discovered that they have a few too many servers in production for comfort. When upgrade time comes around, the network administrator has to visit each server—and upgrade time in the Windows NT Exchange space comes around quite often. In addition, the more servers you have, the more software license fees stack up. Exchange 5.5 lets people ignore the previous 16GB limit for stores and build clustered systems, potentially leading to the consolidation of several smaller servers into larger systems. The fewer servers you have, the less time you must spend managing, updating, and maintaining them.
However, Exchange 5.5 has a few challenges. Exchange in a clustered environment is more resilient than on separate servers, but the disk subsystem still represents a single point of potential failure. Also, clustering isn't as functional yet as you'd like it to be, and you'll have to wait until NT 5.0 for clustering to improve. Consolidating a few servers will result in very large information stores (databases), so be prepared to exercise disciplined backup policies and use the fastest possible backup devices.
Groupware has never been a comfortable function for Exchange. Public folders and electronic forms are not good enough. But the Exchange Scripting Agent shows signs that it will help developers build sophisticated applications on top of public folders and begin to leverage the email infrastructure. The third-party market is also heating up, and I expect to see in 1998 second-generation workflow and document management applications that are integrated with Exchange and offer many different client interfaces (i.e., not just Outlook).
Microsoft launched Exchange Small Business Edition (SBE) at the end of 1997. At first glance, SBE is a truncated and brain-dead version of Exchange 5.0; it's limited to 25 users and is unable to connect to other servers, except across Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) links. But those limitations aren't important. SBE is the missing piece that will let thousands of small businesses that run Microsoft Mail post offices today move over to Exchange. I don't perceive much interest at Microsoft in keeping Microsoft Mail around for long. If you're running Microsoft Mail and haven't yet moved to Exchange (probably because of its complexity), you'll want to move now.
According to the pointers revealed at the last Exchange conference in California, Exchange 5.5 is the last Exchange release for NT 4.0. The next release of Exchange with new functionality is closely tied to NT 5.0 and will ship shortly after NT 5.0 hits the streets. Whether this prediction turns out to be true depends on competitive pressures and the shipping date for NT 5.0. I wouldn't be surprised to see a small feature release of Exchange come out sometime in 1998.
—Tony Redmond
Thin Is in Small Business
Seizing the opportunity to help small businesses grow, Microsoft released Small Business Server in the last quarter of 1997 (see Mark Smith, "Small Business Server Brings Big Opportunities," November 1997). Among the other firms that also see opportunities in the small business arena is Citrix. Citrix has released a new, small-business version of its popular WinFrame product. WinFrame provides a server-side back end that hosts a network's applications, all of which run directly on the servermuch like X Windows in a UNIX environment, where the server does most of the processing. The new version, WinFrame Workgroups, supports up to five users. WinFrame relies on Windows NT as the server platform.
WinFrame's type of functionality reduces the cost of ownership through centralized management, and WinFrame works with existing applications. Citrix says franchise operations are perfect candidates for the new software because many of the franchise operations are widely dispersed, and Citrix excels in remote access situations. Citrix entered into a licensing agreement with HP that lets HP bundle Windows-, DOS-, and Java-based Citrix client software on its systems. WinFrame Workgroups has a suggested retail price of $2495, and the Citrix Load Balancing and Secure ICA options cost $1495 per server.
—Mark Joseph Edwards
IE 4.0 Available on Other Platforms
Microsoft is making Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 available for mixed platform environments that might not include Windows NT. Microsoft has provided a Preview 1 release of IE 4.0 for several UNIX platforms, beginning with Sun Microsystems' Solaris platform and expanding to include versions for HP-UX, IBM AIX, and SGI IRIX platforms.
At press time, the Macintosh version of IE 4.0 was in beta, due out January 6, 1998, and Microsoft said it would ship a Windows 3.1 version by the end of 1997. Dave Fester, project manager for IE, says that Microsoft has reworked the Windows 3.1 version for smoother operation with existing hardware and software; it will run with less than 8MB of RAM. But because Windows 3.1 is a native 16-bit platform, don't expect the same performance as you find on 32-bit operating systems such as NT.
—Mark Joseph Edwards
Changes in Microsoft's Licensing Policies
No one seems to clearly understand Microsoft's licensing structures—the scheme is too complex. The folks in Redmond undoubtedly know the scheme is too complex; I suspect they've logged thousands of calls asking for clarification. One clue to understanding the plan's complexity is that Microsoft has a license wizard on its sales Web site that guides you through figuring out what you need to buy. But even the nifty wizard isn't enough to clarify the policies.
If you thought you had just about figured out the leasing structures, you might have to start over because Microsoft recently made more changes. For some users, the new policy might mean you'll have to pay more to get the desktop coverage you need. As of December 1, 1997, Microsoft no longer offered the Maintenance Plus and Upgrade Advantage Plus concurrent licensing options for the Office suite. Customers under these licensing options must choose a new option when their current license expires.
Concurrent licensing is popular with many firms, not just large corporations. Concurrent licensing lets a company with 750 users purchase only 100 licenses if only 100 users run the software simultaneously. Many companies use this technique to keep costs down. For example, if a company has offices in Britain and the US, the British office can use the software during its business hours, and the US office can use the software during a different set of hours—a completely feasible arrangement in light of the countries' large time difference. Microsoft dropped this option.
Corel responded to the news by promoting its concurrent licensing schemes. Many buyers already see Corel's Perfect Office as more affordable to own and maintain than Microsoft Office. But Office continues to dominate the desktop. Microsoft will not drop its volume licensing, but it will restructure those plans for pricing per desktop.
—Mark Joseph Edwards
New Threats to Privacy
Just when you thought you'd put encryption keys and privacy issues to bed, the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) released a new report that includes encryption and public key escrow issues. The report recommends the creation of a key escrow so that under a court order, law enforcement officials can access your private communications.
Although many users are fiercely against key escrow, our public servants see things differently. They want encryption users to offer copies of their private keys, which introduces new potential for misuse or abuse.
The PCCIP report argues, "Today, the right command sent over a network to a power-generating station's control computer could be just as effective as a backpack full of explosives, and the perpetrator would be harder to identify and apprehend." I want to know why someone would connect a sensitive power-generating plant network to the Internet in the first place.
The government implies that it wants your private keys (if you use them) so that sometime down the road it can try to mandate the use of these keys on everyone for positive identification. Either way, our privacy is again coming under attack. For opinions on both sides of this debate, go to http://www.pccip.gov/summary.html or http://www.crypto.com/key_study.
—Mark Joseph Edwards
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