Lotus cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail provide the necessary tools if you need to communicate with offices in far-flung locations
Howard Eglowstein and Ben Smith
Businesses all over the globe are looking to E-mail as a way of communicating with remote offices. It's usually a lot less expensive than installing WAN (wide-area network) services, and E-mail permits people to take their work with them when they travel. In this review, we focus on two packages that command the lion's share of the E-mail market: Lotus's cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail.
Both packages are all-encompassing LAN-based E-mail systems that can run on just about any computing platform and can effectively tie large organizations together. Both support clients running DOS, Windows, the Mac, and OS/2; cc:Mail adds Solaris. As options, both packages provide remote client soft
ware and gateways to other major mail systems.
The two packages use a shared file access model, where a series of applications use a shared file area on a server to manage, transfer, and exchange E-mail. Administration software allows a network administrator to add users, mailing lists, and BBSes and perform other management tasks, such as directory synchronization.
We've looked at earlier versions of these E-mail giants before (see "Mixed Messaging," March 1993 BYTE), but much has changed since then (and is still changing). Of the two companies, Lotus has made more changes; it has revised its Windows client interface, for example, and added remote client software for Windows. (Since our review, Lotus has also added support for NetWare MHS and more flexible directory synchronization.) Microsoft has added MAPI support and X.25 and AT&T EasyLink gateways, along with more minor changes.
Both cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail still have good user interfaces, but when it comes to ease of setup and ad
ministration, cc:Mail comes out ahead. However, the fact that Microsoft Mail hasn't changed as much as cc:Mail may have an explanation: Microsoft is working on a totally new E-mail system with capabilities similar to those of Lotus Notes. The new mail server, EMS, will run on Windows NT.
Lotus cc:Mail
Lotus's cc:Mail is easy for the administrator to configure, easy for users to handle without elaborate instruction, and reliable. Its faults are few. It suffers from a lack of consistency between platforms, which can complicate training. From a management perspective, it also lacks tracking ability, so you can't determine the status of a particular message.
A cc:Mail implementation uses one or more central post offices. In E-mail-speak, a post office is a place to collect messages and maintain a database of users. A post office can be physically a dedicated machine or a shared file area on a network. Local cc:Mail users run the cc:Mail client software on a DOS, Windows, or OS/2 system, a Macinto
sh, or a Sun workstation running Solaris.
The user interfaces on the client packages look and feel like other applications you might be familiar with. The DOS client software uses character-based menus, while the other versions use pull-down menus in the style of their respective environments. The Windows interface, for instance, uses drag-and-drop functions to do things such as adding recipients to a mail header.
To establish a cc:Mail post office, you need a LAN with enough shared file space for your user database and messages, and dedicated DOS or OS/2 machines for any gateways you want to install. Once the post office is established, the mail administrator runs a Mac- or DOS-based utility to add users and additional post offices to the system directory.
Have My Gateway Call Yours
A key part of a cc:Mail setup is its collection of optional gateways, software that you run on dedicated PCs to connect your cc:Mail system to other mail systems. The most common gateway in a typical cc:M
ail configuration runs a copy of Router 4.0 ($1295) under DOS. It serves to connect two cc:Mail post offices by a phone link or a LAN connection.
Lotus also offers gateways for many common mail systems. The SMTP Unix mail gateway ($349) uses a LAN's TCP/IP connection to a mail-equipped Unix system to transfer mail between your cc:Mail users and any standard Unix mail system. Other gateways include a UUCP Unix mail gateway ($495), an MCI Mail gateway ($1295), and a fax gateway ($1995) for converting ASCII mail messages to outgoing faxes.
Lotus's Router doesn't need big hardware, and it's easy to configure. To run the standard Router program, you need a DOS workstation (an old 286 or 386 will do nicely) with a network connection to the post office it's going to serve, and a modem and phone line if you expect to share mail with cc:Remote users or other Router-equipped post offices. When several post offices coexist on one physical LAN, Router doesn't require a modem to transfer messages from one po
st office to another.
To try out Lotus's latest version of Router (4.0), we created a new post office on BYTE's editorial LAN, on a different file server than the one we use for everyday E-mail. Then we put a 33-MHz 486 PC with an AT&T DataPort 2001 14.4-Kbps voice/data modem on the network to serve as the gateway running Router. Novell NetWare allowed our 486 to access the two different post offices as different drives.
In the post-office database, a remote post-office entry can be one of three types of addresses: the phone number of a machine running Router for that post office, the name of another valid post office that has the target post office in its directory, or the drive and path through a network connection of the other post office. We successfully used the test post office to exchange mail with our production department's E-mail system with all three methods.
When a cc:Mail router is not connecting two post offices on the same LAN, it's calling another router to transfer mail o
r waiting for another router or a remote user to dial in. Once two post offices connect, they identify each other by post-office name and password; they then transfer their mail through an error-correcting protocol. Incoming mail for a local post-office user is posted directly into the mail database, and mail that needs to be forwarded to another post office is queued for the router to resend.
Unfortunately, Router can handle only one phone line. If you want multiple phone lines servicing your mail system, you'll need several machines, each running a copy of Router, or you can install a multiport serial board in an OS/2 machine and run cc:Mail Multisession Router 1.0 ($3495) with up to eight modems.
A router or multisession gateway connection accesses the mail database through a LAN connection. Besides the mail access, the gateway also needs a call list that defines each of the events that you want the gateway to handle. For instance, you might set up your gateway to automatically scan the datab
ase every 5 minutes and dial out to your California office if there's any urgent mail waiting to go out. (Mail can be of low, normal, or urgent priority.) You might choose to have normal-priority mail go out in batches a few times a day and have low-priority mail wait to go out until 11:30 p.m., when the rates are lower.
Mail administrators will appreciate that Router can keep a log of everything it does. However, the logs are in a nonreadable format. To decipher them, you need the help of a third-party or custom software package. The logs are useful for debugging a finicky modem connection and also serve as a form of mail tracking. Lotus cc:Mail has no mail-transaction tracking of its own--once you send a message, there's no way to tell if it's on its way.
Mail sent through Router will, at the very least, have the post-office transfer noted by date, author, and subject. BYTE's production mail system uses these logs for a robot mailer that summarizes the previous day's activity and sends the sum
mary to an administrative mailing list each morning. Lotus plans to add tracking capability later this year, but in the meantime, the logs work well enough for interoffice mail.
From the Road
For the most part, the software for accessing a cc:Mail post office from a portable computer is nearly identical to the desktop version for any particular platform. The only real difference between the remote and LAN-based client software is that the remote software must establish a modem connection to a post-office gateway before exchanging mail. Remote packages cost $295 per client.
The Mac remote-access software uses the same clean front end as its desktop cousin (shown in the screen at left). The icons are large and clearly labeled; the clean screen design and simple operation make it a breeze to run from the small 640- by 480-pixel screen of a portable Mac. The latest versions of both the stationary and mobile software also support Apple Events for automating your mail sessions through AppleScript.
For folks who insist on the smallest possible E-mail system, Hewlett-Packard continues to bundle a reduced version of cc:Mail Mobile into the HP 100LX palmtop computer (see the text box "E-Mail in Your Pocket" on page 124).
The biggest change in cc:Mail's mobile lineup is the new cc:Mail Mobile for Windows software. Except for its added dialing directory and modem support, it's the spitting image of the desktop version 2.01 Windows client. In addition to pull-down menus, you get a large number of icons that you can build into any number of tool palettes. Drag-and-drop operation is the norm for most functions; to add a name to an address field, you simply select the name from the directory and drag it to the address field.
While the rich functionality of the Windows remote version is handy to have, the software is also difficult to use without a mouse. When you're already juggling a briefcase, your carry-on bag, and a computer while you're traveling, you may not want to pack a clip-on trac
kball as well.
Windows Rules
The shining feature in the Windows software (both remote and desktop versions) is its support for rules. They let you predefine certain events that cc:Mail automatically watches for. When you go on vacation, for example, you can have your desktop system check the subject heading of your incoming mail. If it's a system log that doesn't require your attention until you return, you can set up a rule to move that type of message into a folder.
Using rules both in and out of the office can greatly cut down on connect time, and it makes using the mail system much more efficient. We're looking forward to seeing rule support incorporated into the other clients as well.
Microsoft Mail
Microsoft Mail has different faces, depending on whether you're a user or an administrator. Users get an easy-to-use interface that is consistent with that of other Microsoft Office products on the same platform. Administrators, however, see something less attractive behind the scen
es--an inconsistent, hard-to-use set of utilities for setup and management.
You can tell a good user interface by two things: the ease with which a new user learns it and the facilities that it offers for efficient long-term heavy use. Microsoft Mail does well in both of these categories. As proof, look at the user's guide--the core section is only 12 pages long. You simply don't need a manual.
Also, because there are several ways of accomplishing the same task with Microsoft Mail, you can use the product in a manner that reflects your personal style of working. Even the character-based MS-DOS interface is easy to navigate around in, but, as with any other DOS interface, you have to learn a few not-so-obvious keystrokes to move in and out of different modes--between text-entry mode and command mode, for instance.
Microsoft Mail provides a convenient set of options for every user. You can use system-defined address directories and personal address books, to which you add addresses either f
rom system directories or on the fly. For DOS, the structure of the message folders and address books follows the same model as the DOS file system; for the Windows interface, it follows the same model as the File Manager.
The optional remote user interfaces, which let you connect to your E-mail system via modem rather than from directly on the network, are nearly identical to the on-line interfaces. The workstation and remote versions of Microsoft Mail allow you to create and view messages off-line while you're disconnected from the mail server, a feature that allows user productivity even while the network or server is not working. Lotus cc:Mail remote packages provide a similar capability.
The only real difficulty with the Microsoft Mail user interfaces is the differences among the DOS, Mac, and Windows interfaces; they are completely different, both visually and in their command organization. If it takes training for a user to learn the DOS interface, it will require retraining for that pers
on to learn the Windows-based interface.
Installing Microsoft Mail
Microsoft Mail requires either a Microsoft LAN Manager-compatible network or a Novell NetWare network, a minimum of 4.5 MB of disk space on the server, plus an additional 6 MB for the DOS and Windows client programs. A DOS-based client workstation only needs to be a PC with 512 KB of free RAM, but a Windows client should be at least a 386-based workstation with 4 MB of RAM (although it will run--more slowly--on a 286 with less memory). An OS/2 Presentation Manager client should have 8 MB, although, again, it will also work on less memory.
Without training, you may find the first Post Office (the E-mail server database) installation difficult. The documentation doesn't clearly define what model of E-mail server the system uses, nor does it distinguish between a file server and an E-mail server, referring to both as just "server." The model that Microsoft Mail uses is that of a shared file system sitting on a network server, by
default mapped to drive M for all the PC clients. Each client user runs an interface that allows him or her to read and compose messages that are retrieved from and sent to the server either directly over the network or, in the case of a remote client, through a DOS-based MTA (Message Transfer Agent) that runs on a separate PC connected to the network.
The planning guides and installation instructions never explain a procedure as they lead you through it, so you never know if you're on the correct path until the module you've installed either works or fails. Even worse, every module and option has its own installation method; there is no standard overall installation interface, an attribute of almost all PC software today. Once installed, nearly every administrative module has its own interface as well. Some are command-line, some are character-based windows, and some are even Microsoft Windows-based.
Most pieces of a Microsoft Mail system require an INI file, whether or not they're Windows appl
ications. Unfortunately, nearly every INI file has to be either created or edited by hand and placed in an appropriate directory path. The administration manual is full of examples, but it's not always specific about where these files need to reside. On the positive side, once you have worked this out for yourself, Microsoft Mail is fairly consistent.
Once things are set up, you have a considerable amount of control over how directory synchronization takes place. When you have remote post offices, the data communications gateway can double as the connection between post offices. The remote post offices use the same message format as users do for keeping their user directories synchronized. There must be one directory server to and from which the other post offices (i.e., the requestors) pass and receive their changes, but you control when the updates occur, which users and groups get updated, and the address types to be updated other than Microsoft Mail directories (e.g., SMTP and X.400).
The se
rver utilities include a program for building a text file to use for importing NetWare users' accounts into Microsoft Mail. Unfortunately, Microsoft still hasn't extended the character set for this directory to include all the characters supported by NetWare's name bindery. You must edit entries containing characters such as the underscore, a common character in both NetWare and Unix account naming.
There is also a name-extraction utility for LAN Manager. But even though LAN Manager is a Microsoft product, Microsoft Mail account naming is more restricted than it is in LAN Manager. The name-importing function is slow; it takes almost a second to process each name on a 33-MHz 486 server with the administration application running on a 50-MHz 486 machine.
A very positive element for Microsoft Mail is its transaction logging. You can follow just about any kind of activity using these tools. Lotus provides transaction logs only with its Router software, but it doesn't give you any way of reading them
.
Branching Out
For going beyond the LAN, there is a host of optional gateways and enhancers for Microsoft Mail, including those that support Fax ($1995), MCI Mail ($995), IBM Profs ($14,995), X.400 ($4495), and NetWare's MHS ($995). We evaluated the TCP/IP SMTP gateway ($4995), a feature that we believe should be built into all professional E-mail systems today. The most difficult part of this installation was adding a second network-protocol stack on the gateway machine.
Because of the load on the database and server, a reasonable maximum number of users for a PC-based E-mail system such as Microsoft Mail is about 300. Large installations require more than one E-mail post office. Even though the second and third installations are easier, they introduce the complication of installing the necessary gateway for keeping the system E-mail directories synchronized. Microsoft Mail includes the modules for doing this, but its model scales well only up to a few thousand total E-mail users.
T
he problem is that this is a PC network with a PC DBMS, and the database operations must occur on a client PC across the network; the result is too small a server and too slow a database. Any organization with more than 300 users will probably want to develop its own E-mail directory scheme. Fortunately, Microsoft Mail can import and export directories, as well as interface to other programs, through DLLs and the MAPI protocol.
In other words, you can extend and automate Microsoft Mail by running external applications written in both C and Visual Basic. Despite Microsoft Mail's shortcomings as far as administration is concerned, the extensibility of the product is the one feature that makes it stand out in large and sophisticated installations.
An organization we talked to that has a very large Microsoft Mail installation indicated that the fact that it had standardized on a single mail system was far more important than the fact that it had to build its own directory service and write its own i
nstallation and administration manuals. Having one well-designed, consistent interface to E-mail is more important to this organization than the difficulties of adjusting a PC-scale product to a widely dispersed network of 20,000 users.
Easier Access
Lotus and Microsoft may own the bulk of the LAN-based E-mail market, but there are other contenders you may want to look into. Many run on top of MHS, a transport layer from Novell that uses a standardized shared file space on a server. An MHS mail package uses this transport layer to provide its communication services. In theory, this means any MHS package should work seamlessly with any other; many users find this to be true in practice.
Lotus is constantly tuning and enhancing cc:Mail. The latest new tool is the cc:Mail Mobile client for Windows. It's a tremendous tool for remote offices, although it might be a bit cumbersome to handle on your portable computer due to its heavy reliance on a pointing device. While the Mac mobile client also re
quires a mouse, it manages to accomplish its task with simpler motions.
Microsoft's totally new NT-based E-mail engine should be ready now, although client software is currently available only for Windows for Workgroups (and will be included in Chicago). The new engine will provide group functionality similar to that of Lotus Notes, and, with MAPI support, it should be just as open as Microsoft Mail. If it also includes access to the global E-mail community without optional packages, customization, and modification, it will be an attractive package. For now, Microsoft Mail is a good choice if you need a closed E-mail system with just a few post offices.
For LANs with around 300 users or fewer, a PC-based E-mail system such as cc:Mail or Microsoft Mail makes a lot of sense. Beyond that, finding names in the directory becomes a chore for users. With that said, we find both packages easy to use for clients (which should be one of your strongest considerations) and roughly comparable otherwise. The
pros and cons cancel each other out. Either package provides you with the necessary administration tools as well as the means to connect with the outside world.
The Facts
cc:Mail
DOS (version 4.0) $295*
Windows (version 2.01), Mac (version 2.0),
OS/2 (version 1.0) $495*
Unix (version 1.0) $895*
10-user upgrade $345
25-user upgrade $845
100-user upgrade $3295
*Per post office.
Lotus Development Corp.
800 El Camino Real West
Mountain View, CA 94040
(800) 448-2500
(415) 961-8800
fax: (415) 961-0215
Microsoft Mail for PC Networks 3.2
10 users $695
20-user upgrade $1349
100-user upgrade $5500
Microsoft Corp.
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
(800) 426-9400
(206) 882-8080
fax: (
206) 936-7329
A Comparison of Key Features
Lotus cc:Mail
+ Easy-to-learn client user interface
- Lack of interface consistency between client platforms
+ Easy setup and administration
- No message tracking
Microsoft Mail 3.2
+ Easy-to-learn client user interface
- Lack of interface and feature consistency between client platforms
- Inconsistent administrative tools; disorganized documentation
+ Message tracking
Illustration: The Mac version of cc:Mail has large, clearly marked icons for the selection of major mail functions. The global name directory is annotated with colorful icons that tell you at a glance whether the recipient is local to your post office or at a remote post office. Selecting a post office as the recipient is a handy way to send mail to someone who may not be in your directory.
Illustration: Microsoft Mail draws heavily on the Windows interface for most of its look and feel, making it easy for Windows
users to learn. When you compose a new message, you can select the recipients from a full post-office list or from one of several alternative lists.
Illustration: The Windows version of cc:Mail adds a spiffy new rules function that processes mail messages for you automatically. This example shows a rule that, when receiving a new mail message, looks to see if it comes from a user named "Robomail" with a subject of "Activity log." When it finds a new message, it automatically moves it to a storage folder.
Illustration: Unlike the Windows version, Microsoft Mail's Macintosh client software has a Spartan, monochrome look about it. While it does the same things as the Windows package, the Mac package lacks features that Mac users typically expect, such as drag-and-drop icons.
Howard Eglowstein and Ben Smith are testing editors for the BYTE Lab. You can reach Howard on the Internet or BIX at
heglowstein@bix.com
. Ben is the author of Unix Step-by-Step (Hayden, 1990). You can reach him on the Internet at ben@ bytepb.byte.com or on BIX as "bensmith."
E-Mail from Afar
