Am I missing something here? Why is it that I seem to be the only person
who thinks that MIME based e-mail packages can take on the very profitable,
yet proprietary mass market e-mail packages like Microsoft Mail (aka Network
Courier), Lotus cc:Mail, Da Vinci E-Mail, etc?
The basic architecture that I would see working is as follows:
- MIME based user agent running on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.
- Uses POP3 over TCP/IP as transport between user agent and server.
- POP3 compliant servers for Unix, Novell NLM, Univel platforms.
- SMTP protocol used for server to server communications.
Nice features of this architecture:
- because TCP/IP is used as a transport for both client/server and server/server
communications, you can use other off the shelf components for things like
providing remote dial in support: ie use SLIP/PPP communications servers
for this task.
- again, since TCP/IP is used as the transport, you can take advantage of the
standard TCP/IP APIs that exist on Windows (Windows Socket API) and
Macintosh (MacTCP).
- same user interface whether you run the user agent remotely over dialup or
locally from a LAN (assuming you use SLIP/PPP for dialup communications)
- interoperates seemlessly, without the need for gateways, to other SMTP
based servers and MIME based user agents.
This a broad architecture and there are many details to be worked out, such
as user directories, directory synchronization, IP address assignment, etc.
My question to the Net is: am I missing something obvious, or is there a
tremendous opportunity to make buckets of money constructing and selling
such a system?
Phil Trubey | Internet: ptrubey(_at_)netcom(_dot_)com
Systemhouse Inc. | Voice: 415-327-8337
| Fax: 415-243-0471