Bridging The Interoperability Gap
By Nancy Cox
Distributed content is a major corporate information head- ache. Information exists on many platforms, in many databases, discussion groups, mail messages--just about everywhere. Businesses are finding that data acquired in one system, such as purchase orders, employee benefits, customer tracking or contact management, must be shared with entirely
different and isolated systems. Moreover, autonomous divisions are deploying various messaging platforms based on their own requirements. Bridging the interoperability gap between Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), X.400 or nat
ive Post Office Protocol (POP)/Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) messaging applications is one solution.
Not much has changed since the days of old, when bridges were central to commerce and communications. We've simply moved from the physical to the virtual in exchanging our wares. It's the difference between walking your horse and cart over the bridge and having a threaded discussion in a Notes database stay intact when replicated to an Exchange folder.
Just as we wouldn't expect everyone to live on the same side of the bridge, it would be impractical to standardize on a single messaging product. A business shouldn't have to rip out a good infrastructure to meet a strategic unification goal. There is no perfect collaborative computing platform, and if you want to match the right tool to the right job, you must have multiple systems for support. But that doesn't mean you have information islands with no bridges connecting them.
We installed Lotus Development Corp. Notes, Microsoft Corp. Exchan
ge and Novell GroupWise in our San Mateo, Calif., and Syracuse, N.Y., labs to test various interoperability solutions. We found in this testing and from working with various organizations that there are different levels of bridging that gap, from simple message
exchange to the transparent and seamless flow of documents, messages, calendars, workflows and more among different systems. Businesses can decide how much interoperability is needed to meet their objectives, at what cost of ownership and with what support services.
Logs Across the Water
Just throw a log across the water and you have a functional, single-span bridge. On the simplest level, interoperability is defined in terms of basic messaging and directory exchange, using gateways, connectors or Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) to move mail between people and applications. Bridging is accomplished by using X.400 or SMTP transport protocols. Exchange, Notes and GroupWise support both protocols, and we've found that achieving this level of
basic connectivity is simple using the tools provided by these platforms. Common management tools and application programming interfaces (APIs), such as Microsoft's Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), can be used if interoperability is tied to the messaging and directory backbone; the system then can be viewed as a unified platform, albeit in a limited sense (see "Making Good Connections with SMTP and X.400," November 15, 1996, page 164).
We also found that another very simple approach from the Exchange side is to add Lotus Notes to your profile's list of services. It's worked effectively for us, and lets us see our Notes inbox from within our Exchange client and interact with it without having to launch the application separately.
If your business needs more than just a log across the water, you'll have to construct a complex bridge capable of supporting both horizontal (torsional) and vertical (compressional) forces. A bridge has to supp
ort a heavy traffic load and be strong enough to span the distance without buckling.
Likewise, in a business, a variety of approaches to bridge a more complex interoperability gap between Exchange and Notes may be necessary. The business may use a single front en
d for vertical interoperability between a groupware application and a database. Or it may require horizontal interoperability between different groupware applications, such as mail, calendaring and workflow, when users of On Technology Corp.'s Meeting Maker want to check the calendars of those on Lotus Organizer.
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