Which E12 Upgrades Will Be Inexpensive?

Two to Four Million Cellphones Have Tight Integration With Consumer Messaging

Exchange has a Global Address List, or GAL. As the name suggests, this is intended to be an organization’s main directory.

However, it doesn’t usually work that way. For a start, often the directory of record is kept in a third-party repository, such as a PeopleSoft directory or a relational database.

But suppose your organization uses the GAL as the directory of record. Things don’t work the way they should. For example:

• You still have personal address books.
• Some GAL information--notably people’s email addresses--is put into personal address books.
• Often information in personal address books is more current. For example, when people change their cellphones, they often don’t update the GAL, but instead notify their personal acquaintances.
• GAL information is only available if you have IP connectivity.
• GAL information isn’t synchronized with handheld devices.

All in all, the overlap between personal address books and the GAL is confusing. It should be cleaned up.

… David Ferris, with thanks to itrezzo’s Vern Weitzman

Text Message Spam a Minor Problem

itrezzo’s Business Continuity Solution Keeps Cellphone Contacts Up-to-Date

It’s hard to tell, because many of the details aren’t out yet. However, based on internal discussions, discussions with Microsoft, and discussions with third parties, here’s our best sense at the moment.

We think most organizations will find total upgrade costs of $150 to $250 per mailbox.

We expect the main cost components to be:

• New hardware. Figure $5,000 per server.
• Software. Pricing hasn’t been announced, but we guess client access licenses will be around $70 each, and Exchange Server around $5,000 per server. These costs are similar to today, though will apply to customers without Software Assurance.
• Labor deploying new desktop software. You won’t be forced to touch clients. However, many attractive new features of E12 will likely require client upgrades, such as the unified messaging, enhanced mobile support, and task-oriented Outlook/Office 12 user interface.
• User time. The new features will require time for users to learn.
• Technical support labor. The new Exchange System Manager interface will take time to learn. It’s too early to tell the cost and impact of rearchitecting, say from Exchange Routing Groups to Windows Sites; hopefully E12 provides tools.

The overall level of effort, however, is likely to be less than moving from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000/2003, because the move to Active Directory is already accomplished.

… David Ferris and Lee Benjamin, with thanks to Azaleos CTO Keith McCall

Email Security Suite Selection Criteria

Over the last half of 2005, I’ve gradually become aware of a change in work styles:

• People are working harder than ever.
• There’s a greater level of frustration associated with the work.
• People have the sense of never being able to catch up.

In part, this is due to the reviving economy in the United States. But mainly, I suspect it’s due to email:

• It’s common now that people receive 80 or more emails per day.
• Many people have the habit of constantly checking for new email, and allowing themselves to be interrupted by new email.
• People constantly try to keep the inbox down to a minimal level.

What this means is that work is driven by the random dictates of arriving email. Minor tasks constantly divert people from more important ones. This translates to stress and frustration, the correct feeling that one simply can’t keep up and that things that should be done aren’t getting done.

We have to recognize that we can’t let the inbox dictate how we spend our time. It’s bad for business, and bad for people.

My personal approach is:

• Schedule time for important tasks.
• Try to check for email only at the end of tasks; ideally, only four or five times daily.
• Create the following parallel inboxes:
  • Inbox-Do today.
  • Inbox-Do over the next two days.
  • Inbox-Do over the next week.
  • Inbox-Do over the next two weeks.
  • Inbox-Long term.
• Deal with email immediately if that can be done in a few seconds.
• Otherwise, put a new email into one of the parallel inboxes.
• When there is free time, scan the Inbox-Do today inbox, and deal with email there.
• On a daily basis, review all the parallel inboxes, and move email to different inboxes as appropriate.

… David Ferris

AOL “Triton” IM Client Contains Shovelware

Symantec’s Range of Email Security Offerings

We were recently updated by Roaring Penguin Software. The company sells software based on Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. We were particularly interested in the company’s anti-spam offering, CanIt.

CanIt incorporates the usual cocktail of spam filtering techniques, including Bayesian content analysis, greylisting, and SPF. It’s based on the open source project, MIMEDefang.

One unusual and interesting aspect of CanIt is called Locked Addresses. This allows a user to create a unique alias for the exclusive use of a particular sender or domain. For example, if you want to give out your email address to a web site, you use CanIt’s web interface to create a new alias, telling it that the alias should only accept email from a single domain, or from a specific email address. CanIt rejects email sent by other domains. You don’t need to tell CanIt which domain to restrict receipt from — CanIt will assume that the first message received is from the intended domain. Simple, yet effective.

… Richi Jennings