The E-Mail Frontier: Emerging Markets and Evolving Technologies

From the Book: The writing of this book has taken the kind of exciting turns and twists that resemble the exploration of a new frontier. Five years ago, we originally undertook to write a book about an international Message Handling System standard called X.400. Times change, markets change, and perceptions change. After several false starts and restarts, we realized that electronic mail in all its magnificent variations was the subject we were most interested in writing about, and we agreed that X.400 and its X.500 Directory Services companion were but some of the threads (albeit important ones) in the tapestry of global electronic messaging. We decided that this book would present that entire tapestry. It has not been an easy task. But after three years of intensive research, we believe that this book now represents a snapshot of the state of e-mail in the mid-1990s. It is a state that truly resembles a new frontier—roughshod yet full of promise, chaotic yet full of opportunities that we can only partially imagine. The world has over 50 million e-mail users. This book is for those among them who want either to delve into the technology or to understand the market challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. It is intended especially for e-mail industry practitioners—investors, regulators, executives, managers, marketers, analysts, writers, and engineers—for whom, we dare hope, it will prove an invaluable reference text. Organization In this book e-mail is covered from a number of points of view for a wide variety of practitioners and current and prospective users. These points of view include: Anoverview introducing an e-mail vision, reviewing concepts and technology, and outlining the issues that will be addressed throughout the E-mail Frontier. A description of the private messaging, public messaging, and EDI messaging markets to assist decisionmakers in supporting their current and future e-mail requirements. A description and analysis of both proprietary and standards-based e-mail technologies that should prove of benefit to all levels of our readership.A vision supported by recommendations on e-mail planning and implementation for users, vendors, service providers, and public policy developers. Chapters 1 and 2 present today's issues and tomorrow's challenges for e-mail by (1) tracing the evolution of e-mail and electronic commerce, (2) introducing key standards and technologies, and (3) developing a vision of the opportunities that e-mail offers for controlling and dominating the information glut that has become a ubiquitous attribute of our society and economy. In Chapters 3 and 4 we describe and analyze private messaging facilities and public messaging markets with a view to identifying the important trends and obstacles to be overcome. In Chapter 5, we describe the architecture of host and LAN-based e-mail systems, gateways, and e-mail integration servers, also discussing how they function and how they interconnect to each other, and concluding with case studies of current products from selected market leaders. Chapter 9 discusses leading edge uses of e-mail for mail-enabled applications, electronic commerce, and workflow automation. Chapter 6 describes how the X.400 standard works in considerable detail and analyzes its benefits and shortcomings, and its successes and failures. Chapter 7 provides a similar discussion and analysis of Internet Mail which, coupled with the TCP/IP suite of communications protocols, is enjoying great success positioning itself to assume the mantle of a worldwide e-mail architecture. (We also provide information in Appendix A on the major standards groups and consortia, including how they work and how to receive information from them.) Chapter 8 delves into directories to underscore their importance to the success of an e-mail infrastructure. Chapter 9 covers the intersection of messaging and electronic commerce technologies including EDI, mail-enabled applications, and workflow. Chapter 10 revisits the e-mail vision first broached in Chapter 1 as we attempt to assemble and give coherence to the plethora of issues that have surfaced in this book. We do so by recommending factors that users should consider in using or implementing e-mail; and we also consider the issues from the perspectives of vendors, service providers, and public policy developers. In conclusion, we assess how far the e-mail industry has come, how far it has yet to go, and what barriers it must yet overcome in order to achieve the e-mail vision and to pacify the e-mail frontier. Roadmap We have organized this book so that it can be read in a number of ways: For those readers who are new to the field of electronic messaging and commerce, Chapters 1 and 2 should serve as a useful and necessary introduction and overview. For those readers who want to know more about emerging e-mail markets and trends, Chapters 3 and 4 will be of special interest. Chapter 9 also addresses the emerging markets for EDI messaging, mail-enabled applications, and workflow automation using an e-mail infrastructure. Those readers with a primary interest in technology may first want to read Chapters 5-9 (where the architectures and functions of the major e-mail, directory, and electronic commerce technologies are described in detail) before moving on to market trends. Appendix A provides an introduction to the de jure and de facto standards and standards bodies as well as technical detail on what the standards cover. Readers may want to browse through the Appendix before attacking the technologies in Chapters 5-9. Chapter 10 provides recommendations on what to consider for those readers poised to deploy or to expand an e-mail system. This chapter is written with the assumption that readers have read the previous chapters. To assist in making your reading as efficient as possible, each chapter ends with a summary which reviews the thesis of the chapter and its key points. Acknowledgments We are grateful to many people for their contributions to The E-mail Frontier, including those who have given us moral encouragement and those who have diligently reviewed our manuscripts and offered us astute and trenchant commentary. They include: Harald Alvestrand of Norwegian Telecom for his insistence on precision and accuracy and for his care in giving us a European point of view. Richard Ankney of Fischer International Systems Corporation Dave Crocker of Silicon Graphics and the IETF for his diligence in assuring that we provide an accurate and objective view of Internet Mail capabilities and initiatives. Rik Drummond of the Drummond Group Ted Myer and Gary Rowe of Rapport Communication for their support, review, commentary, and provision of Rapport Communication written and illustrative material Anthony Rutkowski of Sprint International Michael Ransom and Steve Trus of the National Institute for Standards and Technology Michael Zisman, President of Soft*Switch, Inc. All the users, vendors, and professional associates who have taken the time to provide us with background material and comment on sections of our manuscript. We would like to thank and commend those individuals in voluntary standards work —through organizations both accredited de jure and de facto—for their devotion to the cause of standards and their dedication to the ideal of worldwide, ubiquitous e-mail and electronic commerce. We must also thank our editor, Tom Stone, for his unflagging patience and encouragement; our associate editor, Debbie Lafferty, for her perseverance in the face of what, at times, must have seemed like incipient authorial grouchiness; and our production supervisor, Mona Zeftel, for her efforts to give aesthetic harmony to our work. Finally we thank our beloved wives and children who endured our virtual if not physical absences while we toiled at our workstations. Their love and support have brought us to this pass. Daniel J. Blum David M. Litwack