As corporations continue to migrate from legacy host-based or shared-disk messaging systems, sales of groupware products, such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, are soaring. A step above simple messaging, these solution offer value-added services, including shared calendars, task tracking and document- and discussion-management systems. In addition, these products can also serve as the foundation for custom-developed application environments for creating custom workflow or other collaborative applications.

Also of increasing importance are support for Internet messaging protocols--SMTP/MIME, POP3 and IMAPv4--as well as support for LDAP access to address books and other white pages data. Likewise, supporting today's mobile workforce makes Web access to the corporate mailbox a necessity. Effective Web access includes not only sending and receiving mail remotely, but to access calendar and task information through a low-bandwidth HTML connection.

But in the enterprise, messaging remains one of the highest-profile network applications. This year's award for enterprise messaging solution goes to Lotus Notes with Domino, which offers a reliable and scalable solution, including clustering as well as support for platforms ranging from Windows NT, most major forms of Unix and RISC platforms, to AS/400 and S/390. Finalists in this category are Microsoft Corp. Exchange Server 5.5 and Novell GroupWise. Microsoft offers a solid choice for many organizations with its own groupware features, Outlook client and connectors to various legacy messaging systems. Novell's GroupWise delivers tight integration with NDS, a flexible NetWare-centric messaging environment, as well as a comprehensive document-management system.

--Dan Backman

Message Backbone Switch

Winner

PMDF e-Mail Interconnect 5.2, Innosoft International, (800) 552-5444, (626) 919-3600 www.innosoft.com

Finalists

Mail*Hub, Control Data Systems, (888) 742-5864, (651) 415-4272 www.cdc.com ISOCOR N-PLEX Connect 1.0, ISOCOR, (310) 581-8100 www.isocor.com

Award: Message Backbone Switch

The messaging world has turned somersaults in the last two years. Before, linking up cc:Mail, MS Mail, and other systems was the key reason to put in a backbone. Now, the watchword is control: of traffic to and from the Internet, intranet and Extranet (whatever those mean); to and from Exchange and Notes; to and from older mail systems. Mail has become a crucial part of business, and messaging backbones are needed to give organizations the control and reporting they need. Managing response time, handling heavy loads, doing directory lookups and synchronization, securing mail, providing reports, and tracking lost e-mail are all key requirements for a backbone.

This year's message backbone switch winner, Innosoft International's PMDF e-Mail Interconnect, exceeds the needs of most organizations in all the heavy-duty backbone tasks. With an infinite number of knobs, buttons, adjustments, logs, and tools, we found PMDF able to handle every messaging backbone task and support every standard. As industry leaders in security and reliability, PMDF turns in world-class performance. Get rid of that lousy SMTP proxy in your firewall and dismantle an expensive and unmaintainable proprietary backbone: just give the mail directly to PMDF.

Control Data Systems' Mail*Hub, a finalist in this category, is just as strong a contender, with an even better GUI. PMDF squeaked by with a narrow margin this year, and we expect the two products to be on the short list of anyone who needs a carrier-class messaging backbone.

We also have high hopes for ISOCOR's new NT-based messaging backbone. It's not in the same class as PMDF or Mail*Hub yet, but with a lot of spit and polish, ISOCOR's N-PLEX Connect could be next year's winner.

--Joel Snyder

Messaging Client

Winner

Netscape Communicator 4.5, Netscape Communications Corp., (650) 937-2555 www.netscape.com

Finalists

Outlook Express, Microsoft Corp., (425) 882-8080 www.microsoft.com QUALCOMM Eudora Pro 4.1, QUALCOMM, (800) 2-EUDORA, (510) 490-4750 www.qualcomm.com

Award: Messaging Client

Although effectively commoditized, there is a wide gap in functionality between different IMAP- and POP-capable messaging clients. Of primary importance are support for filters to automatically manage today's high volume of incoming messages, support for rich text and HTML-encoded messages, effective MIME handling and support for multiple accounts. As a rule, most Internet mail client now include NNTP client support for access to UseNet newsgroups and private discussion groups.

While most Internet mail clients show their POP heritage by supporting the bare minimum of the IMAP protocol this year's winner, Netscape Corp. Communicator is the first IMAP client we've seen that doesn't simply download a list of headers while conditionally downloading message bodies. For instance, Communicator 4.5 will only download specific message parts on demand--dial-up users won't be forced to download a 10-MB attachment in order to read the message text. Also important are effective support for off-line use of IMAP folders, which includes two-way synchronization of server-side folders and locally cached messages.

--Dan Backman

Messaging Security Product

Winner

Entrust/Express 4.0, Entrust Technologies, (888) 690-2424, (972) 671-9542 www.entrust.com

Finalists

Netscape Communicator 4.5, Netscape Communications Corp., (650) 937-2555 www.netscape. com PGP Enterprise Suite 3.0.1, Network Associates, (408) 988-3832 www.nai.com

Award: Message Security Product

In real estate, value is a function of three variables: location, location and location. In the case of secure messaging, the three most important features are management, management and management. Most secure messaging systems rely heavily upon public key cryptography for key exchange and public key infrastructures (PKI) for trust management and key distribution. Inherently complex and confusing, PKI is best abstracted from the user interface--as are choices for encryption algorithms and key sizes. While standalone S/MIME and PGP clients continue to improve, they still require a significant amount of understanding on the part of the user, who is still forced to manually generate key pairs and submit to enrollment in the PKI of their choice.

Our winner this year, Entrust Technologies, offers the best solution we've seen so far in terms of integrating secure messaging with a manageable PKI. Because it includes a client fully integrated into the PKI, Entrust largely frees the user from navigating the process of enrollment, and automatically handles key revocation checking. In addition, Entrust also offers support for two key pairs (one for signing, another for encryption), which allows increased security of digital signatures while still offering key escrow and recovery of encryption keys.

Our finalists this year are Network Associates' PGP Enterprise Suite and Netscape Corp.'s Communicator. PGP, offer a public key infrastructure not based on traditional X.509 certificates. In contrast, PGP allows a combination of hierarchical and peer-to-peer trust models, which can effectively scale up the the enterprise--or down to the workgroup level. Also worth mentioning is Netscape Communications Corp.'s Communicator 4.5, which offers improved key management features and S/MIME support.

--Dan Backman

Workgroup Messaging Server

Winner

ISOCOR N-PLEX Global 2.21, ISOCOR, (310) 581-8100 www.isocor.com

Finalists

Imail Server 5.0 for Windows NT, Ipswitch, (800) 793-4825, (781) 676-5700 www.ipswitch.com Netscape Messaging Server for NetWare, Novell, (800) 453-1267, (801) 222-6000 www.novell.com

Award: Workgroup Messaging Server

The key to delivering an effective workgroup messaging solution is balancing ease of use, cost of implementation, flexibility and features sets. While nearly a commodity market, mail products offer differing levels of functionality. Because they are most often deployed at the workgroup level or in small organizations, ease of use is paramount. Administrators shouldn't be responsible for configuring anything past DNS domain name (and possibly SMTP relay settings).

However, in addition to ease of use, these products must have the flexibility to meet the needs to supporting Internet messaging. Even the smallest workgroup server should fully support ESMTP, POP3 and IMAP4. Likewise, administrators should have the option to set policies, such as mailbox sizes (particularly in IMAP environments where users store their mail on the server's spool). Also, security is also important: features like spam-filtering and message relay protection are critical.

We were impressed with ISOCOR's N-Plex Global messaging server because of it's ease of use, flexibility of management and attractive price. Standout features were its Java-based personal account manager, mailing list management features, and the ability to publish whitepages data to an external LDAP directory.

--Dan Backman