MS Exchange Server competition

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, at 8:20am, clark_k at pannaway.com wrote:
>> Do either support MAPI?  That is, do they provide seamless Microsoft
>> Outlook integration?
> 
> What does MAPI give an end-user ...

  MAPI stands for "Messaging Application Programming Interface".  In typical
Microsoft fashion, it can mean a couple different things.

  One is the wire protocol the Exchange client modules in Outlook use to
talk to the Exchange server's Information Store.  That I'm not really
interested in.

  The other thing MAPI can mean is the API that Outlook provides for storage
and services.  Basically, everything in Outlook -- contacts, calendar, mail,
tasks, etc. -- use MAPI to actually store stuff.  The details I'm a little
fuzzy on.  But if you have a back-end that supports MAPI, then Outlook will
work "just like it does with Exchange", at least for all the client-side
stuff.  (You don't get Event Sinks, Forms, or any of the other fancy
server-side stuff Exchange has, but most people don't use that.)

  While we have used Outlook with IMAP with some success, it is far from
perfect.  It is mail only.  Contacts, calendar, and so on are still stored
in a .PST file on each workstation.  (PST is a self-destructing file format
that even Microsoft Exchange fans hate.)  Outlook also insists on putting
"Sent Items" and "Drafts" in the PST file, which means they are not
available via IMAP.  There's no shared calendar or contact list, which a
lot of organizations *do* want.

  Of course, you can pretty much everything most small organizations need
with a combination of Outlook or Outlook Express, IMAP, phpGroupWare,
SquirrelMail, and so on.  It works pretty well, but it lacks the
"all-in-one" package of Outlook and Exchange.  Right or wrong, a lot of
people are willing to pay big bucks for Windows and Exchange just so they
can get that.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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