Standards-Based E-Mail For The Enterprise

E-mail is perhaps the most pervasive and important application delivered by an enterprise network. With e-mail, employees can communicate with each other, as well as with their partners, suppliers and customers. Without e-mail, employees increasingly practice for thumb-twiddling competitions.

IT departments have a variety of choices when setting up an e-mail system. Should IT manage the e-mail system in-house or outsource it? If managed internally, should it then be based on a more or less proprietary system, such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus cc:Mail or Notes-and thus offer unique services such as threaded messaging or powerful groupware features? Or should the e-mail server and its clients be based strictly on Internet standards, thus offering more choice and flexibility for platforms and components?

It is not the purpose of this lab test to answer those hairy questions. There are strong arguments both for outsourcing and for managing e-mail inside. And the debate between open and closed e-mail systems is different for every enterprise.

For this review of e-mail solutions for the enterprise, we have made a few important assumptions. The first is that e-mail will be managed inside the company. The second is that it will be based on Internet standards, namely the POP3 and Internet Messaging Access Protocol version 4 (IMAPv4) standards for client access to the server. Finally, we'll assume that the company will host its e-mail solution on a single Windows NT 4.0 server. Therefore, we are talking about small to midsize enterprises.

A Break With Tradition
Traditionally, e-mail administrators have maintained one user information database, while the network administrator maintained another. Keeping those directories synchronized is an eternal challenge. Thanks to LDAP, there is now a standard way to share databases. For this test, we have made a fourth assumption-that the user directory will be accessible via some form of LDAPv3 connector, at least to the extent of letting an LDAP client browse and search the directory.

We had hoped that the products we tested would offer broad support for the use of external LDAP-compliant directories, instead of their own user directories. However, that feature does not seem to be widely offered by Internet-standardized e-mail packages. Perhaps we will see this feature next year.

In this review, we were primarily looking at how easy each e-mail solution was to set up, access and administer by a small or midsize business.

We defined setup as the pro-cess of installing the e-mail software and its directory onto a clean Windows NT 4.0 server with Service Pack 4 installed, then connecting it to our Internet gateway. This process was made simple by telling our network address translation (NAT)-enabled firewall to redirect inbound SMTP traffic to that particular server during its evaluation.

We defined access as the process of setting up the e-mail client software so that it could access the server to send and receive messages using the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols. We used Outlook Express and Eudora Pro E-mail, our in-house client, for this review.

Administration tested the usability of the server's admini-stration console and features.

For a detailed description of our testing environment, see "How We Tested The E-Mail Servers" on this page.

Observations
We looked at the value-added features offered by each e-mail server. The most crucial one is Web-based e-mail access. Today, it is an option, but tomorrow it will likely be as basic a requirement as POP3 and IMAP4. We also looked for fax or paging gateways, mailing lists, user access to e-mail forwarding and auto-reply (that is, vacation mode).

In addition, we were on the lookout for the users' ability to browse the LDAP directory. Another important feature we were seeking was protection from malicious users, through spam filtering, access blocking, server-side virus checking and the ability to limit the server's SNMP mail relay activities.

Performance and scalability considerations were not part of this test's evaluation criteria. Given a typical enterprise server platform, all of the products we examined can support the hypothetical customer we envisioned for this review, running a few hundred users off a single server with a message load of a few tens of thousands of messages per day.

This lab test covers four products we identified as meeting our LDAP, IMAP4, POP3 and Windows NT requirements: Stalker Software's CommuniGate Pro, Qualcomm's Eudora WorldMail Server, Ipswitch's IMail Server and Isocor's N-Plex Global.

Originally we planned to include Netscape's Messaging Server 4.0 in this review, since it met our criteria, but it was in the process of being upgraded at the time of our testing.

CommuniGate Pro 3.0b6
CommuniGate Pro is a versatile product from Stalker Software Inc., a small company known for its CommuniGate e-mail server for the Apple Macintosh. CommuniGate Pro is a cross-platform server, with versions available for BSDI, Digital Unix, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS, Windows 95/98/NT and Solaris. CommuniGate Pro's strengths, beyond its cross-platform support, are its ease of setup, fully integrated Web-based e-mail and granular Web-based administration. Its weaknesses are its lack of comprehensive documentation and virus protection.

CommuniGate Pro is distributed via FTP or HTML download. The download is for a full-featured trial version, which places banners on all sent messages. Upon payment, Stalker sends a key code so you can disable those banners should you find them annoying. To install CommuniGate Pro, we unzipped the files and ran installer.exe. All it asked us was where we wanted to install the program and data files. A minute later, the e-mail server was live on our Compaq ProLiant server, with no reboot necessary.

All administration is done through a Web browser via a management TCP/IP port. There is no functional difference between local and remote administration, so we did all administration from a Windows 98 PC on the LAN. Browsing to a specific TCP/IP port on the server brings up the two-paned management interface. It is apparently pure HTML-no Java or scripting.

The interface is quick and intuitive to use. Each item contains a hypertext link to Stalker's Web site, where extensive help is available. Using that information, it took us little time to inter-face CommuniGate Pro with our ISP's mail forwarder. It is reminiscent of old Unix management pages, only better looking and hyperlinked.

Unfortunately, the online help is the only documentation provided. If you want local documentation, you can download those online Web pages to a local machine in a .ZIP file. If you do not know how to do something with the product, you will need to do a lot of clicking and reading to find out. Stalker would be well served by producing a real manual that outlines how to set up and use the product, and that provides reference information, rather than relying purely on help items for individual menu selections.

The Web-based management scheme proved to be the easiest of all the e-mail packages reviewed here. It was more intuitive than the management console used by Qualcomm's Eudora WorldMail Server and Isocor's N-Plex Global, and better organized than the diverse tools used by Ipswitch's IMail Server. In addition, it offers full remote administration. The only reason to go to the server console would be to stop or start the CommuniGate Pro server from the Windows NT Server Manager. Once it was running, we never set a finger on the console again.

The Web interface also allows for separation of management functions. Although the Post-master account can perform all administrative functions, other users can be given privileges for handling the user directory, changing settings for all or certain domains, adjusting global server settings, and accessing logs and queues. It is simple, clean and highly efficient.

CommuniGate Pro includes a basic database server with a fixed schema, and an LDAP connector to allow that database to be searched by any LDAP client. Users have the ability to change the public information in that directory by browsing to the e-mail server's TCP/IP port and logging on. If the CommuniGate server is hosted on a Windows NT server, the administrator can set the server to use the Windows NT password for that user. The user account must still be created in the CommuniGate Pro database. However, this provides a centralized way for users to manage their passwords.

At the present time, CommuniGate Pro can only use its own included e-mail directory. However, the documentation hints that a connector to external databases is in the works.

If you want to offer an open e-mail system, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, CommuniGate Pro can make it possible. It offers an option, which is turned off by default, that allows users to create accounts at will. This can be done using a predefined account template and browsing to the e-mail server. But we advise enabling that feature with caution.

CommuniGate Pro is extremely Web-centric-it offers Web access to e-mail, in addition to POP3 and IMAP4 access. It also provides a basic, HTML-only Web site for each registered user. It supports mailing lists and shared mailboxes to improve group productivity. Anti-spam features also are present e-mail may be blocked from specific users or domains, or blocked based on text filters, and SMTP mail-relaying capabilities can be restricted.

So what is still missing from this product? Well, for starters there is no SNMP management, nor are there fax or paging gateways. Additionally, there are no hooks or capabilities for virus scanning.

But CommuniGate Pro does offer a good value: the first rung on the license ladder is $499 for 50 mailboxes, and the price drops sharply at the 200-user level and above.

Eudora WorldMail
Qualcomm Inc.'s Eudora WorldMail Server 2.0 is a basic e-mail package that supports POP3, IMAP4, and the Authenticated Post Office Protocol (APOP) for client access. But it does not offer advanced features such as Web access to e-mail, virus checking or spam filters.

What it does give you is very easy setup and administration, and some nice touches such as mailing lists and Web-based user access to personal configuration information. Incidentally, Eu-dora WorldMail is based on an old version of Isocor's N-Plex source code, licensed to Qualcomm. Note that Qualcomm has long offered Internet Mail Server, an unrelated mail server product for the Macintosh platform.

We found Eudora WorldMail Server 2.0 extremely easy to set up from the distribution CD-ROM, requiring only a few mouse clicks on our Netfinity test server's console. The process would be straightforward to anyone experienced with e-mail software, but it would likely be confusing to a first-time e-mail administrator. Wizards would have made the process simpler, but they were not included.

The software comes with helpful documentation, including a 300-page printed manual and an even more extensive online reference. The printed documentation guided us through configuring the server, creating a post-master account and setting up an Internet gateway.

WorldMail is administered through the WorldMail Management Center (WMC) application, a unified interface for adding, deleting and changing users, groups, shared IMAP4 folders, Internet gateways and other features. You can do everything from there. By default, the GUI-based WMC is loaded onto the WorldMail server but it also can be installed on a remote Win-dows NT machine.

Basic administration tasks, such as making user or group account changes, also can be handled using a Web interface. Users also can log on to the LDAP directory via a Web browser and use a Java application to change their own mailbox settings, such as passwords or auto-reply messages, thereby reducing some of an e-mail administrator's workload.

WorldMail's LDAP directory software cannot be configured to use another directory, nor does it include synchronization utilities that would let you use an existing enterprise directory along with WorldMail.

When we called Eudora's tech support department to inquire about such a function, we were immediately referred to a University of Michigan Web site (www.michigan.edu) that contained some third-party utilities and documentation.

In addition, you can access the WorldMail directory externally by pointing a browser to a specific TCP/IP port.

Qualcomm's Eudora division, the maker of WorldMail, also is the developer of the Eudora Pro e-mail client for Windows and Macintosh. Eudora Pro was one of the clients we used during testing. WorldMail includes a utility to "autoconfigure" Eudora Pro or Eudora Light clients using the Applications Configuration Access Protocol (ACAP). However, this capability only works with Eudora's e-mail clients, not with other ACAP-compatible software. So, even though we found that it worked quite nicely, this feature did not affect WorldMail's score in this test.

In all, we did not run into any trouble getting our e-mail clients to work with WorldMail's IMAP4 and POP3 mailboxes.

Beyond just the basic POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail, WorldMail also includes convenient mailing lists (such as boardmembers@company.com), which may include public or restricted posting ability, and are easy to set up and use. Aliases, such as info@company.com, may be set up for users. Virtual e-mail domains also can be created.

Users may be defined for encrypted access using the APOP or Challenge-Response Authentication Mechanism, Message Digest 5 (CRAM-MD5) protocols. An administrator can set a default maximum size of user mailboxes in kilobytes, and then individually override that value for specific users.

In WorldMail, there's no way to block spam, including either particular incoming e-mail addresses or entire domains. This is a feature that's becoming increasingly important in today's enterprises. However, WorldMail's SMTP mail-relaying capabilities may be disabled, or limited to certain IP addresses, to stop bulk mailers from hijacking the server.

If bare e-mail is all that's required, WorldMail offers a good value for organizations with a small number of users.

IMail Server
Ipswitch Inc.'s IMail Server 5.02 demonstrates how much a clever developer can do with only a little bit of code. The IMail software came on four floppy disks-the first floppies ever put into our ProLiant 1600 server. Yet, it's a very complete product, offering many e-mail services such as junk-mail filtering, Web-based mail access, virtual hosts, and pager and fax gateways.

We found IMail extremely easy to install. We particularly liked that it did not require server reboots and that, at the conclusion of the installation procedure, it prompted us to create a few initial e-mail accounts-a nice touch that let us get it up and running instantly.

And quick it was: Once the mailboxes were enabled (they are disabled by default), our LAN-based clients were able to send and receive POP3 and IMAP4 mail instantly. From a Web browser, connecting to a specific port brings up a login screen, with an intuitive and attractive e-mail interface.

The IMail Server is almost as easy to administer as it is to install. On the server, there are several administrative applications. One application is for managing users, aliases and trees; one for mailing lists; one for pagers; one for the Web server; and another for users. There is a control panel application that handles security and other issues.

There are even several text files to edit for indicating which e-mail addresses and domains should be blocked. Getting all of the settings right, particularly for our Internet gateway, took some time and juggling of mul-tiple tools. Consolidation would be a virtue.

In addition, there are a number of command-line utilities, which we were delighted we did not have to test.

Remote administration can be handled through a separate Windows 95/NT utility, or via a Web interface, logged in on a different port. Not all features are available remotely. For example, security settings can only be changed through the local control panel. Granted, an e-mail server's security settings should not need to be tweaked very often. But when you do need it, it may be too inconvenient to go to each server's control console and run the control panel application.

When it comes to day-to-day administration, the local IMail Administrator and the Web-based admin were quick and efficient at the task. It was easy to complete user moves, adds and changes.

Also simple was determining global or per-user maximum mailbox sizes (by megabytes or number of messages), configuring vacation messages and mailing lists, and setting aliases and forwarding addresses. Also, the included documentation was fine, but we scarcely needed to use it.

We were pleased to see how easy it was to set such parameters as maximum mailbox size and number of messages on the fly. IMAP4 public mailboxes, by the way, are merely read-only messages belonging to an e-mail account named Public-what could be easier to manage?

IMail Server includes an LDAP-compatible database for user information. For user authentication, you can choose to use either this directory, the Windows NT domain user database, or an external ODBC-compliant database.

The software documentation thoroughly describes how to set up the included LDAP server, but contains fewer details about the other options.

The IMail Server database has a predefined schema. You cannot add or change the fields in the database. Also, it is only designed for e-mail usage. You cannot add additional names to the database except by creating them as user accounts and then disabling their e-mail access. For our test, we used the IMail database. We were pleased to see that it did appear to be LDAP-compatible; we were able to browse and search it using all our LDAP clients.

What set IMail apart from the crowd-other than its floppy-disk delivery-was its rich set of additional e-mail features. The control panel applet includes strong antispam filtering. It allows the administrator to block not only certain user accounts or domains, but also to limit the SMTP mail-forwarding capabilities to trusted IP addresses.

Configuration of SMTP capabilities is extremely granular. Users and administrators are able to set up aliases, forwarding and vacations.

IMail Server's mailing list capabilities also are excellent. They are implemented via a separate application that scans IMail mailboxes. It includes full automation for users to subscribe and unsubscribe, create moderated and unmoderated lists, and public and private lists.

Users can even subscribe to daily digests of mailing-list content, rather than receive individual messages.

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