Richi Jennings writes:
I got some well-deserved butt-kicking about this. Let’s cut the
cr*p.
Q: What is OpenMail?
A: OpenMail is a pretty cool server product that
does mail and more. Well, we think it’s cool anyway: you decide. It
comes from Hewlett-Packard, and it’s based on Internet and ITU
standards. It has an installed base of 10 million seats. Check out
www.hp.com/go/openmail for more.
Q: Why is HP exhibiting OpenMail at Linux
World?
A: We are demonstrating a Linux port of OpenMail
6.0, looking for feedback. We are close to announcing a new Linux
messaging/collaboration product, based on OpenMail technology.
Q: Is this a product announcement?
A: Not yet.
Q: What sort of feedback do you think you’ll
get?
A: We think that many people who’d use Linux as a
server would like OpenMail. A Linux product based on OpenMail 6.0
would be a great alternative to ‘generic’ Internet e-mail servers.
In addition to robust Internet standards support, a Linux edition
of OpenMail would include OpenMail 6.0’s new Web client, plus
support for M*cr*s*ft Outlook, and other ‘clients-of-choice’.
Q: ‘Clients-of choice’? Huh?
A: We designed OpenMail to work well with many
different desktop mail clients. OpenMail’s ‘clients-of-choice’
shims provide high-fidelity communication between diverse desktops.
It means that customers do not require evil gateways. We support
popular mail clients such as Outlook and Lotus cc:Mail. Of course,
OpenMail also supports ESMTP, IMAP4, POP3, LDAP, MDNs and DSNs.
Q: But any ‘generic’ IMAP server can talk to
Outlook, can’t it?
A: Yes and no: there are several flavors of
Outlook. The full, ‘corporate’ Outlook clients use a set of APIs
known as MAPI. Only OpenMail can connect corporate Outlook to a
UNIX server with this level of functionality. Developed in
collaboration with M*cr*s*ft, it does all the additional Outlook
shared calendars, public folders and address book stuff.
Q: Is there any other way for end-users to
connect to an OpenMail server?
A: OpenMail also has a cool Web client. This was
recently demonstrated at the France ’98 World Cup soccer
tournament, where one single small OpenMail server was successfully
used to provide communications for thousands of journalists and
officials across the France ’98 wide-area intranet. Even Jimmy Hill
and John Motson?
Q: Is your target market ISPs or
enterprises?
A: Both. OpenMail’s classic market has been
enterprise, or ‘business’ messaging and collaboration. However,
service providers that are interested in providing higher
functionality services than just ‘generic’ Internet e-mail find
OpenMail very attractive. Linux has always been an important
platform for ISPs.
Q: So OpenMail is very scalable then?
A: Yes, the new version of OpenMail (6.0) is
designed to support thousands and thousands of simultaneous
business users on a large UNIX server. Note: we’re HP. We’re not so
stupid as to lie about scalability.
Q: On which operating systems is OpenMail
available today?
A: HP-UX, AIX and Solaris.
Q: So will you be opening up the source code to
OpenMail?
A: No, sorry.
Q: You say you’re ‘looking for feedback’ about
a possible Linux OpenMail product, so how can people get their
feedback to you?
A: We have some booth drones here at Linux World
for people to talk to, or they can send e-mail to
linux@pwd.hp.com.