Market Forces
Four fundamental forces are acting on vendors and users alike, reshaping the IT landscape, and impacting Information and IT strategies. Each offers opportunities and, as the NET-TEL roadmap will show, the Route400/500 product range is rapidly evolving to encompass these, delivering "best of breed" solutions coupled with NET-TEL's ongoing and renowned customer-responsive service and long-term support.
The Internet and Intranets
Inescapable, except in the most secure and isolated environments, "the Internet" is used to mean many things. It is essentially two:
- an open global network providing a usually reliable, high bandwidth, low cost of access/use bearer service for a wide range of protocols and services. In this regard "the Internet" (or TCP/IP) is now the de facto network standard with SNA and X.25 rarely mentioned, and its protocols are widely used as the basis for in-house networks (or Intranets)
- a suite of (application) protocols delivering services such as electronic mail, the world wide (or in-house) web, file transfer, terminal access and process-process links, with protocols being evolved to deliver directory services, and transaction and electronic mail based security
Route400 and Route500 products have been able to communicate over the "Internet"/Intranets for a considerable time. Through support for the RFC 1006 standard, "the Internet" has long been a communications option for client-server and server-server communications between NET-TEL products, and with "Internet capable" systems from other vendors.
At an application level, our Internet Mail Gateway provides the highest level of service between X.400 and private or public (SMTP or) SMTP/MIME capable systems, allowing users of both systems to freely exchange messages with or without attachments, and without the need to worry about which system particular users are connected to. Route400 mail clients are able to handle Internet/Intranet recipients as easily as Fax and other e-mail, in a completely uniform and intuitive fashion.
For Intranets, the key technology is the World Wide Web protocols, which are now being used for sophisticated and flexible information access. Through the use of appropriate gateways, this capability can be extended to messaging and secure Electronic Commerce.
In all cases we will continue to track the evolution of technologies specified in Internet standards and RFCs, and support those that are appropriate. We will also emphasise the development of new information products that are appropriate in such environments.
Microsoft
Microsoft has provided a significant technological and marketing lead over a range of client/end-user and server perspectives. Much of this influence has been positive in harmonising the marketplace, and setting a reference framework within which suppliers may provide solutions that can be seamlessly integrated with a broad range of disparate products.
From a client/desktop perspective, Windows in its various guises is the near universal operating system, with Windows 95, Windows NT Workstation and their successors defining the network enabled development and deployment platforms for coming years. Microsoft's Office application suite is also widely in use with no clear opponent from competing vendors. The only substantive threat to Microsoft in the near term is from "thin clients" (Network Computers, WebTVs and various "Information Appliances") using web interfaces and based on a network-server centric model, championed amongst many by Sun, Oracle and Netscape.
From a server perspective, Windows NT Server is rapidly filling the low end of the server market. To date it is only considered as a limited alternative to large-scale UNIX servers. The casualties in the market to Windows NT servers have therefore been low-end UNIX systems, OS/2 and a mass of the NetWare market, where Windows NT Server has taken a substantial market share of existing and new LAN Server systems. UNIX market share has remained roughly flat, though this is expected to change (decrease) as the volume of Windows NT Server sales picks up and as Windows NT Server matures to the point where it can more reliably attack mission-critical high-volume core UNIX-based systems and services.
NET-TEL's response is to take our long-term commitment to the supply of Windows client and server based products a stage further through two significant actions:
- Route400/500 client and server products are being re-engineered and enhanced, as required, to deliver native 32-bit integrated Windows-logo compliant MAPI/SPI and OLE capable products which will continue to deliver added value over equivalent Microsoft products in the areas of integrity, reliability, functionality, performance, support and value-for-money
- Windows NT Server is a primary server development platform for Route400/500 and emerging products, joining our extensive UNIX server product set, and future deliveries will evolve in synchrony.
As a consequence of the wider accessibility of information because of the growth of networks such as the Internet and Intranets, and the more pervasive network-enabling of desktop and mobile systems, the benefits of Collaborative/GroupWare and Workflow applications such as:
- Electronic Messaging
- Group Scheduling
- Discussion Forums and other forms of Conferencing (including voice, shared application and video)
- Document Libraries and database access
- Team document review, update and consolidation
- Business Processes, including bid approval, expense submission and holiday booking
The underlying technologies to support these are a combination of information "push" and "pull" for which Electronic Messaging is a critical component. Until recently, user choice was between proprietary systems of varying capability, complexity and cost, however standards are now emerging which will allow for wider scale use and deployment of all of the above applications in an open market.
NET-TEL believe that our Route400 product set, coupled with enhancements to provide intelligent shared folders supporting collaborative dialogues and threaded discussions, our commitment to implement widely adopted "Internet" calendar and scheduling protocol(s), and the richness, reliability and integrity of our messaging infrastructure positions us to naturally and rapidly evolve to provide a Collaborative/GroupWare product capability, and support for Workflow and Conferencing products.
X.400 Messaging and X.500 Directory standards
X.400 and X.500 as standards are very much alive and growing in use, and are supported by Microsoft, Lotus (IBM) and many other vendors and systems integrators, PTTs/RBOCs and Voice Messaging providers throughout the world.
As discussed above, "the Internet" is used to describe two fundamentally different and broad capabilities (a global network, and a set of services that run over it). Both X.400 & SMTP/MIME can operate over the Internet as a global network. X.400 provides a more reliable and auditable service over this occasionally unreliable and congested network, particularly useful if one is not sure whether a message is just delayed, or has been lost.
More broadly, X.400 today offers a richer, more reliable, higher integrity, commercially founded service than SMTP/MIME; and is the messaging system mandated by the US Department of Defense, the US General Services Administration and many other government agencies world-wide, EDI/Electronic Commerce Value-Added Network and Service suppliers, and a wide range of businesses, some of which allow "Internet Mail" for casual correspondence but require the use of X.400 for business/mission-critical and reliable messaging.
Internet standards evolve rapidly, and many advantages that X.400 presently possesses can expect to be eroded over time, by the creation of SMTP extensions (such as MIME, which provides support for message attachments).
X.400 is where SMTP/MIME wants to be, and today offers the following advantages:
- universal delivery and read notifications
- exemplary (mixed) character (set) handling and support
- better attachment support
- universal time-bound message delivery and validity
- a reliable and high integrity Messaging Service
- worldwide ability to establish a Service Level Agreement with a national or multi-country X.400 Service Provider
Route400 products deliver the advantage and strength of native X.400 support from the client system without compromising reachability to non-X.400 based systems. They add value over other X.400 vendors through document conversion and other backbone services, offering the following advantages over other X.400 implementations:
- an intelligent messaging backbone that can convert the format of attachments to suit the favoured format of each recipient on a per attachment basis, and generate usable faxes by auto-converting attachments to readable fax content
- a Secure MTA Gateway that can act as a Messaging and Virus Firewall, auto-virus checking any or all in- and out-bound messages dependent on system administrator defined rules
- least/lower cost in- and out-bound fax routing.
Back to Part 1: The need for an Information Strategy
Forward to Part 3: The NET-TEL Vision
