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Computer cognoscenti would never be caught uttering the word e-mail. For some time, unified messaging has been the epicenter of all buzz. It's a marvelous catchphrase for all things to all people. From voice mail and faxes to workflow management, unified messaging has come to span the mundane to the truly mind-boggling. As a result, a full installation of Microsoft's Exchange Server 2000 requires 2 GB of space on the "installation drive," 500 MB of space on the system drive, a recommended 300-MHz CPU with 256 MB of RAM, and a swap file at least twice the size of RAM!
However absurd those requirements may sound, the reality is that e-mail has gone from internal curiosity to external essential and in the process has revolutionized the way business is conducted. As a result, the notion that e-mail serving is an essential driver bringing software built on an Open Source software engine into the enterprise should come as no great revelation.
To get a sense of the breadth of this emerging software market, OpenBench Labs looked at
two of what well might represent the more
radical aspects of what is already a disruptive force. With Exchange Server well entrenched at Windows NT/2000 sites, is there a chance for software with a solid Open-Source pedigree to crack the proprietary monolith? To get an answer, OpenBench Labs evaluated Sendmail for NT v3.0.2.
As ubiquitous Internet connectivity moves closer and closer to reality via technologies like Bluetooth and new breakthrough low-power chips like those from Transmeta, the idea of an Internet-centric Web mail system is becoming a far less radical construct every day. The second e-mail package that OpenBench Labs analyzed was MailStudio @Message v5.0, released last month by 3R Soft. The @ Message package is a serious revamping and extension of 3R Soft's MailStudio 2000 product.
For these tests, we created two distinct test domains dubbed Nti.Sboro and Andover.Nagog in our lab. As their names suggest, Nti.Sboro was a Windows 2000 domain and Andover.Nagog was a DNS domain with servers running Red Hat Linux v6.2. We established a mail server in each domain and used both for internal traffic at OpenBench Labs. At this time, our goal was to evaluate these e-mail packages more for functionality of their mail user agent (MUA) and not for performance of mail transport agents (MTA).
We started by installing Sendmail on NT in our Windows 2000 domain, Nti.Sboro. The buzz about the office was that this project would be a bear: It wasn't. The design goals for Sendmail on NT were to provide a small- to mid-sized enterprise or ISP with the robustness and interoperability of Open Source sendmail, as well as to provide novice system administrators with simple Windows-based configuration tools.
The recommended minimum hardware configuration for Sendmail on NT is significantly less state-of-the-art than what is required for Exchange Server 2000: a 200 MHz CPU, 128 MB of RAM, 20 MB of free disk space, TCP/IP services, and a browser (note the lack of IIS). As a result, we altered our standard procedure of choosing a typical robust enterprise configuration for hardware and tested "the lower limits" for installation.
For Sendmail on NT, we brought out of "retirement"a Dell PowerEdge 2100 server dubbed Wombat. This 200-MHz P6-based system was serving solely as a DNS, WINS, and Active Directory domain controller.
To ADS, DNS, and WINS, we now added Sendmail on NT. Installation of the complete package, which includes v8.9.3 of the sendmail MTA, the Apache webserver, a POP3 server, and a version of the Web-based Sendmail Admin Tool found in the Sendmail Switch family, could not have been a more straightforward procedure. Even with IIS already running on Wombat, installation of Sendmail on NT was as smooth as the ticking of a Patek Philippe. The one drawback we encountered with Windows 2000 integration was the inability to import existing users into Sendmail automatically.
The Sendmail Admin Tool utterly masked the deep, dark complexity of the sendmail configuration file. Forget the bat book; with this tool, even the most bumbling dolt with a freshly
minted MSCP certificate can be entrusted with configuring Sendmail on NT. In fact, there is no better testimony for upgrading to Sendmail Switch from Open Source sendmail than the ease with which this tool enables configuration and maintenance of the sendmail MTA on Windows 2000. With this tool, we were easily able to configure the well-known and very powerful anti-spam, list server, and auto-response capabilities of sendmail.
For users of Sendmail on NT, the package is just another transparent POP3 server connection to be added to their desktop mail application. They simply make a POP3 connection to wombat.nti.sboro from Outlook, Outlook Express, or Netscape Communicator, and off they go with all the heavyweight personal information manager (PIM) capabilities of their chosen MUA.
But what if you don't want to put all of that PIM software on a desktop PC or fat, barely-mobile laptop? That is the intriguing question raised by MailStudio @Message. The concept is simple, but answering it is hardly simple. As a result, 3R Soft provides a free trial license for 20 users with no time restrictions.
The newly released @Message product greatly enhances the MailStudio interface and turns it into a virtual Webmail messaging server. Planned options for @Message include antivirus scanning of attached files, voice mail integration, secure encryption (SSL & S/MIME), and WAP support. In theory, @Message is designed to provide easy access to mailboxes, schedule, a group BBS, and personal file storage from any place at any time. There are a few rough edges, but all of the roughness OpenBench Labs encountered centered around external factors. Like Sendmail on NT, @Message comes with its own version of Apache, which it needs to install-even if you are already running Apache-to run its Web site. The installation is carefully scripted not to step on your existing Web server. Installation is trivial. The only gotcha is to do it with an X-terminal window, since it distinctly does not play well with the standard Gnome console terminal.
Once installed, it's time to dust off the bat book and configure sendmail. While @Message is not itself an Open Source application, it is dependent on Open Source sendmail for its MTA. We had a few nagging configuration problems that were eventually resolved, but all were independent of the @Message MUA. Fortunately, there are a number of sendmail configuration tools popping up on freshmeat.net (see p. 70) that can help with these sorts of issues.
On the opposite end of the problem spectrum, the @Message Web interface makes intensive use of Java scripts. The upside is theoretical anywhere access on any device with an up-to-date Web browser as rich a PIM as Outlook 2000. The emphasis on "up-to-date" is essential. We ran into all sorts of problems with IE 5.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.72, which ships with Red Hat 6.2. Upgrading to IE 5.5 cured all of our problems. Unfortunately, upgrading to Netscape Communicator 4.75 did not. We still ran into a few glitches, such as when attempting to read an attached html document with Netscape.
The @Message interface is quite engaging. As a matter of personal taste, I found the Web interface far more easy to use, more information-rich, and more responsive than the Outlook Web interface on Exchange 5.5. Upon logging into @Message, the user immediately is presented with a notification of any new messages, information of events that they have scheduled in their personal calendar, announcements placed on the @Message BBS, and recent user logins-the kind of information that could nicely facilitate Web-based collaboration services. This all fits nicely into @Message's emerging Web messaging paradigm, which includes shared disk volumes under the control of the @Message MUA.
For those not ready to leap into the world of anywhere access on any emaciated client, @Message does supply a way to see your messages and take them with you. A POP3 server option, called mspop3d, is included with @Message-you need to download the Open Source qpopper package with Message Studio 2000. The mspop3d server is not, however, included in the automated install process. Fortunately, it's a trivial process to copy this POP3 server into its requisite directory and editing the inetd.conf file.
Once that's done, technology troglodytes can connect to the @Message server with a POP3 interface. By downloading only new mail messages and leaving them on the server, these veteran roadsters can engage their e-mail the old fashioned way. Unfortunately, grizzled warriors will be disconnected from all of the other features that make @Message such an intriguing Web-messaging platform.
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