Fixing your company's e-mail problems

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
07/26/05
Today's focus: Fixing your company's e-mail problems

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Problems servicing e-mail for remote users
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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This newsletter is sponsored by Fluke Networks
Download the Special Report: VoIP: Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles,
and Recommendation

VoIP, poses many questions, among them; vendors vs. carriers,
end-user adoption, management complexity, etc. Once these
questions are answered then the benefits of convergence can be
realized. Through research the following special report VoIP:
Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles, and Recommendation analyzes the
questions and the best practices behind implementing a converged
network.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108864
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Recent results from a Network World survey on what you have on
your home network caught us by surprise. Is there a
proliferation of networked storage drives, media players and
VoIP boxes or simply printers, PCs and laptops? For the latest
on what we found out about you, click here:
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Today's focus: Fixing your company's e-mail problems

By Mike Karp

What was your introduction to e-mail? Mine occurred in late 1981
when we installed an experimental system (known as "x.mail") at
Prime Computer in Massachusetts. In those days e-mail was mostly
a "gee whiz" technology, and was as proprietary as could be
(remember, this was pre-Internet).

My greatest problem with the e-mail system in those days was
that it seemed to take a full day to get replies from our
companion site in Bedford, just up the road. Being a newbie at
the company, I of course never realized that the Bedford I was
writing to was really in the U.K., and that my sending something
off to them at 3:00 p.m., would have had a much better chance of
being seen if I had somehow found a way to direct the message to
any of the numerous local pubs where my British colleagues were
quite likely to be.

Roll forward to 2005 and we see that e-mail is now perhaps the
single-most ubiquitous software program on the planet. But in
many ways it hasn't changed much. Notes, Exchange, Eudora, most
of the others, take your pick - they all store messages and
attachments in pretty much the same way as was done in the
1980s, which is to say pretty darned inefficiently. Furthermore,
e-mail systems manipulate data in ways that are so clumsy that a
more suspicious person than I might wonder if the e-mail vendors
really intend to make their money through the sale of their
software at all - some might suspect that the vendors might be
making a better income from their series of surreptitious
investments in the disk drive companies. After all, today e-mail
stores everything everywhere, copies each attachment multiple
times, and the vendors make no serious attempt at providing
workable archiving tools.

It's the sort of thing to make even the greenest of conspiracy
theorists sit up and take notice (ever wonder why the SAME
PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?).

Rather than scurrying off to figure out if "Seagate" or "Maxtor"
or "Western Digital" is really some subtle anagram for Microsoft
however, I suggest you just assume that the way most e-mail
packages handle data is both wasteful and inept, and get on with
your life. Which is to say, look for some useful tools to help
you fix your own company's e-mail problems.

This week let's look at the problems administrators have
servicing remote users.

E-mail admins have several options these days. Most obviously,
they can centrally consolidate e-mail servers over the WAN, thus
simplifying management and consolidating their storage. The down
side? Poor e-mail performance for the remote sites.

The inverse strategy is to put an Exchange server in each branch
office. Deployment and management costs however make this an
unlikely scenario, and one that is particularly ill-advised for
remote offices that lack an IT staff.

The newest version of Exchange provides another option: running
e-mail in cached mode. In this case, users have no visibility to
e-mails with attachments until the file transfer over the WAN is
complete. The bandwidth requirements for this, however, are
considerable. Go this route and you should expect either to slow
down other WAN apps, or to drive up WAN costs, or just as
likely, both.

Next time we will begin our look at how new technologies can
address this and other e-mail problems.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Verizon joins managed security game
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage3824>

2. Future-proof your network
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert3739>

3. VoIP security threats: Fact or fiction?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage3825>

4. The ROI of VoIP
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert3382>

5. Appliances replace DNS, DHCP software
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert3741>

Today's most forwarded story:

Verizon joins managed security game
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage3826>
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Fluke Networks
Download the Special Report: VoIP: Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles,
and Recommendation

VoIP, poses many questions, among them; vendors vs. carriers,
end-user adoption, management complexity, etc. Once these
questions are answered then the benefits of convergence can be
realized. Through research the following special report VoIP:
Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles, and Recommendation analyzes the
questions and the best practices behind implementing a converged
network.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108863
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Storage newsletter:
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Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
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Why is a virtual infrastructure so important? Webcast explains.

Enterprises of all sizes are using virtual infrastructure to
increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IT
operations. Learn the benefits and trends of virtualization and
how IT departments are effectively using this software.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108776
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE
THE NEW DATA CENTER: SPOTLIGHT ON STORAGE

This Network World report takes a look at storage trends such as
virtualization, encryption and archiving. Here you will also
find seven tips for managing storage in the new data center, how
storage encryption can help ease the threat of identity theft,
why one exec believes its all about the information and more.
Click here:
<http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2005/ndc4/>
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