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PMDF does offer a Web-based GUI for operations monitoring, and its constant view of messages flowing through the system is pretty slick. When something gets stopped up, the GUI displays a flaming barrel of toxic waste. The PDMF philosophy is to give you all the tools you need to build everything, including your own GUI. That's nice, but how many people really want to build their own GUIs? Despite this high point, Innosoft has a way to go before it achieves the same monitoring ease as the other switches we tested.

PMDF really tops the competition with its flexibility. The only task we assigned that PMDF couldn't perform was per-user size limits; otherwise, the Innosoft team furnished everything we requested and more. And we never needed to write an application program or even edit a PERL script before completing a task.

Because of PMDF's maturity, it also provides a slew of gateways to foreign mail systems and some wide-ranging support for older protocols, including NJE (BITNet) and UUCP (UseNet) mail. However, PMDF has a platform support problem: Like Wingra's Missive, PMDF lacks support for Windows NT. Innosoft told us that it is working hard on the port of its software to Windows NT, but the company declined to provide information on when the port will be released.

Control Data Systems Mail*Hub 98
Mail*Hub 98 turned in a stellar performance. Mail* Hub is a mail-messaging machine, running on both Unix and Windows NT, which are the most popular platforms for this kind of product. It supports more gateways to more different mail systems than any other messaging switch, and its directory-based architecture lets you trigger actions on messages at almost any level of granularity.

We tested Mail*Hub on a Windows NT system, which was an interesting change because all our previous experiences with Mail*Hub has been on Unix. Actually, the Windows NT version has much in common with the Unix version. Unix systems generally run many processes and eat up a lot of memory. Mail*Hub on NT was no different, running dozens of processes (NT tasks) and bursting out of our 256-MB test system. On a positive note, this segmentation into small, manageable pieces makes it less likely that any one error will take down the entire message switch.

Mail*Hub on either platform will be more familiar to Unix managers because of its core design; it is comprised of more than 100 small utilities. While Control Data Systems has worked hard to build a Windows GUI that encompasses many of these features into its new Rialto Management Station (RMS), there's a lot you can still only do from the command-line utility.

RMS is an impressive addition to the Mail*Hub product line. Running on Windows PCs, it talks back to the Mail*Hub server over the network via IP and lets the manager control configuration information, directory information, and the messaging queues and channels themselves. Although the process of jumping between pieces wasn't seamless, Control Data Systems has come a long way from its older X-based GUI on previous Unix-based versions of Mail*Hub.

Mail*Hub is, more than any other product, wrapped around a single high-speed directory that contains both user and system configuration information. Very little information is stored anywhere else, which made Mail*Hub one of the easiest products to understand. Still, while we've evaluated Mail*Hub several times over the years, the question of how to implement a particular feature has always instigated a long and shallow learning curve.

Mail*Hub installation and configuration was smooth and fairly speedy, especially with the task list assigned. Within the two days allotted, Control Data Systems had its own messaging hub up and running, talking to Notes, Exchange, MS Mail and cc:Mail. But without the assistance of the expert sent by Control Data Systems to lend a hand, the process would have taken much longer. Mail*Hub is a huge product, and it's no surprise that consulting and implementation services are part of the package.