New Technologies for Collaboration and Communication : Is the Enterprise Getting the Message? - enterprise messaging standards - Technology Information

ENT, Feb 3, 1999 by Mark McFadden

As enterprises become more dependent on messaging - faxes, electronic mail, or other messages - it's remarkable to recall that the standards that make it possible to send a fax from your machine to any other, or to type a message to an electronic mail user anywhere in the world, are relatively ancient.

While these standards have remained relatively static, proprietary systems have evolved from host-based products like IBM Corp.'s PROFS and Digital Equipment Corp.'s All-in-One to client/server solutions like Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange. The maturation has been accompanied by the addition of a rich set of functions that go beyond traditional person-to-person messaging.

Is it possible to have the interoperability advantages of standards- based messaging without sacrificing the functionality and power of client/server solutions? "Our customers want to feel secure that their e-mail vendor supports Internet standards," says Doug Stumberger, product manager for Microsoft Exchange. "Both from a business and technology perspective, they want the flexibility to deploy on the Internet. But if they have to choose between functionality and strict adherence to standards, we see them opting for software that gives their users more power."

Enter Internet Mail

Standards-based messaging has been around since the 1970s, but its popularity as a platform for business development is a recent event. The Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) describes a mechanism for sending standard, interoperable text messages from any computer system to another that follows the standards. The Post Office Protocol (POP) provides a store and forward mechanism that allows for clients to be disconnected from the network and still receive mail. The simplicity of the protocols means that they can be widely implemented at a low cost on almost any platform.

The simplicity of these early protocols also exposes a fundamental limitation. Business customers accustomed to the rich set of features and options in proprietary mail systems may find themselves hamstrung by SMTP's weaknesses. For instance, SMTP is unable to send messages that contain things other than text. Pictures, media and binary files from computer applications are too unwieldy for SMTP to handle. SMTP also will not permit a corporate user to request notification when a message is successfully delivered to a recipient - a mundane task for most other messaging systems.

With no method of sending binary files, Internet engineers adapted SMTP to handle attachments. The protocol that describes how to handle attachments using standards-based mail is called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). MIME permits mail clients to send attachments of any kind, marking them with a label that indicates how the message was converted to simple text and what application created the attachment. The richness of MIME allows pictures, audio and video to be sent as a part of messages.

Still, that's not enough. In today's corporate world, messaging plays a fundamental role in collaboration, scheduling, group work and information exchange. Despite its flexibility, MIME and the underlying mail delivery protocols suffer from a fundamental disadvantage compared with proprietary mail systems. Group scheduling, server-based electronic mail and collaboration tools are taken for granted under client/server applications such as Exchange, but are impossible using existing standards-based mail.

The Future is Upon Us

Dave Crocker, an authority on Internet messaging and principal at Brandenburg Consulting, notes that "we're fortunate that the existing components of Internet mail do not need to be replaced - instead, features simply need to be added to support the broader range of demands in commercial environments." In response to these demands, new protocols are being crafted that can make interoperable mail as rich in functionality as proprietary systems. These new protocols, when combined with the other advantages of standards-based mail, have the potential to create a revolution at the foundation of electronic messaging systems.

The first of these specifications, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), is already well established in mainstream messaging software. IMAP is a protocol that permits true mail-to-client/server interaction in the style that network engineers have come to expect in solutions like Exchange and GroupWise. POP, the dominant Internet client access protocol, is simply designed to provide delivery of messages, not access. In contrast, IMAP allows the mail to stay at the server and to be accessed and managed by the clients. IMAP clients no longer have to worry about backing up valuable message stores or running out of workstation disk space.

IMAP clients have substantial advantages over conventional Internet mail clients. A traditional POP client, such as Qualcomm Inc.'s Eudora or Microsoft's Outlook Express, only allows users to download their mail from a remote mail server to their workstations. IMAP clients, on the other hand, can remotely access and manipulate messages right at the server. This means that dial-up users can read a mail message without having to wait for multimegabyte attachments to be downloaded. IMAP is especially attractive for users on the go who don't want to worry about finding a place to download messages. Paul Hoffman, director of the Internet Mail Consortium, points out that roaming users "want to have their messages on servers so they can go to someone else's workstation and read new messages and work with stored ones." IMAP makes that possible.