E-mail and Collaboration

Killer App or Overkill?

E-mail and collaboration continue to be a killer application, increasing company productivity, opening new markets, and reducing costs. But email and collaboration software has grown, far exceeding average needs, becoming cumbersome and expensive. The result is a need for a practical solution, one that meets actual collaboration and email needs, is reliable, easy-to-use and cost-effective.

Copyright ©, 2003, The SCO Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Executive Summary

E-mail and collaboration continue to be killer applications, applications that a large number of users "must have," and may be by themselves the reason for the purchase of computer systems. Together they increase company productivity, open new markets, and reduce costs. The downside is the enormous market lead email vendors to years of competition, building more and more features into products with corresponding price increases. The result is products such as Microsoft Exchange that include excessive features, unnecessary complexity, and a corresponding reliability risk. This feature-overkill is also combined with new and perpetually expensive licensing policies.

The result is unmet needs, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses. These companies' practical use of email and collaboration will never involve technologies such as integrating a PBX into a Unified Messaging system. Instead they need easy-to-use, reliable, and cost-effective email and collaboration in a solution that can be supported with little or no computer staff. Further, this solution needs to acknowledge Outlook's emergence as the most popular email client. The SCO Group has recognized these unmet needs and created the UnixWare® Office Mail Server.

Table of Contents

Email, a Killer Application
   Overkill
   Perpetually Expensive
   High Proce of Unreliability
Unmet Needs
   Practical Collaboration
   Less Expensive Seats
   Not Just For Knowledge Workers
   Don't Take Away My Outlook
   Standards Enable Choice
   The Cost of Switching
   Any IT Home?
Right Place, Right Time
   Less Is More

Email, a Killer Application

There is no doubt that email is a killer application. Across the world, email enables businesses to swiftly correspond with customers, suppliers and other partners. It delivers the increased productivity and reduced costs every business needs. Further, when combined with web sites, email enables companies to increase market exposure and efficiently serve new customers.

Overkill
The downside to this pervasive application is that the enormous revenue for email vendors leads vendors to include excessive feature competition and corresponding price increases. A standalone and conceptually simple email application has been turned into a complex and expensive solution now categorized as Integrated Collaborative Environment. Products, such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, fight for market share by continually adding collaboration features, regardless of how many users truly have the need for them and the time and expertise to support them. Market research studies find that users continue to utilize only a fraction of these products' capabilities. At the same time, the IT staff must license, install, configure, and manage these complex products. The result is a bloated total cost of ownership.

Perpetually Expensive
Microsoft's own Web site estimates the direct cost of Exchange at $485 per year; direct costs include software and hardware acquisition, training, and system administration and management. Indirect costs of downtime and peer-to-peer support add another $2,808 to the equation. Compounding this problem, with Microsoft licensing 6.0, Microsoft switched from traditional software licensing to subscription licensing. Now, it's not just an expensive initial licensing cost, it is a perpetually expensive subscription.

High Price of Unreliability
Cost of ownership is typically oriented around acquisition, installation, training and maintenance. But another intangible cost is productivity lost when an email server crashes. For example, when an email server for 150 users crashes, companies start to lose productivity and jeopardize customer and partner relationships due to delayed communications. For the IT staff or solution provider, there is nothing more visible than losing email availability. The risk of system errors and downtime increases with product complexity.

Unmet Needs

The result of MS Exchange high costs and complexity is an opportunity to introduce email alternatives. In particular, small and medium-sized businesses have unmet needs for a practical level of email and collaboration features, at a lower cost, and with higher reliability.

Practical Collaboration
While Microsoft continues to build more expensive messaging and collaboration products, the needs of small to medium-sized businesses are ignored. Smaller organizations don't use many of the Microsoft Exchange features like Unified Messaging. Features such as group scheduling, calendar, shared address books, and public file folders are more practical. An elaborate application for data conferencing will never make sense in a single office where questions are answered by asking a colleague within hearing range. A small business with little or no IT will not be developing an Exchange workflow application with datalogic, nor will they spend time on Web Distributed Authoring. Companies like this may never achieve adequate return on investment for integrated collaborative environments and they certainly don't need the ongoing maintenance burden.

Less Expensive Seats
Some small businesses have yet to fully implement email and collaboration, since available products are too complex and expensive to meet their needs. The costs are not just expensive software licenses, but the accompanying investment in end-user training, IT expertise, and collaboration application development. This high cost per seat is a barrier. Perhaps, employees have individual email accounts using a mailbox provided by an ISP. This stop gap approach is difficult to scale and can quickly become expensive as monthly subscription costs add up.

Not Just For Knowledge Workers
The need for less expensive seats is particularly high for employees who don't work at a desk. These are people whose primary jobs do not revolve around advanced information management and manipulation, but rather involve tasks like production, retail sales, or field work. Companies can improve employee communications and boost productivity by extending email and collaboration to this population. Costs can be reduced through email communication, an electronic company calendar, and group scheduling. In many cases the cost reduction is as simple as saving the cost of printing and distributing communications. However, a major obstacle to meeting these needs is the cost of licensing and maintaining seats.

Don't Take Away My Outlook
Microsoft's desktop presence and the inclusion of Outlook in the Microsoft Office suite put Outlook on the path to becoming the most popular email client, much as Internet Explorer is the most common Internet browser. Using Outlook as the default email client is a simple, efficient choice. The Outlook user interface is quickly learned since it is consistent with the popular Microsoft Office and Windows design. A significant advantage is the many complementary applications designed to integrate with Microsoft Outlook. The range of applications include anti-virus products, content scanning products, and a variety of industry specific solutions. For example, HomeWorks, a realtor application that queries real estate listings, has a feature to quickly add attachments into Outlook messages. Using the same application to send a message with another email client requires several, repetitive manual steps.

Standards Enable Choice
With Outlook as a natural choice for a desktop email client, Microsoft Exchange has followed as the enabling server. However, it is no longer the case that fully enabling Outlook requires a Microsoft Exchange server. Mature standards such as LDAP and IMAP create the opportunity for a lower cost and lower administration burden on the backend for Microsoft Outlook users. For example, the IMAP standard enables sharing email on any Outlook version. An email server can use standards to integrate with Outlook as seamlessly as Microsoft Exchange. By using industry standards instead of proprietary technology an email server can work with any Outlook version, eliminating the need to track and update specific versions on Microsoft clients.

The Cost of Switching
Freedom of choice comes at some cost. Replacing an entire email system can be expensive and time consuming, and can disrupt daily business, particularly within a smaller organization with little to no IT staff. Many companies completely rely on external solution providers to update servers, install desktop software, integrate technology, and perform troubleshooting and ongoing management. These switching costs result in great inertia and a tendency to stick with email products that no longer meet today's needs. To reduce switching costs, there is a need to incrementally replace the server, leaving the client desktops untouched, without complicated integration.

Any IT Home?
A persistent and fundamental issue behind adopting email and collaboration is IT staff. The 80,000 solution providers in the United States demonstrate the vast technology outsourcing among small and medium-sized businesses. At the same time, users don't want static solutions that can only be updated by skilled solution providers. It is clearly not economical to outsource adding new email users, or even to hire a specialized system administrator. The best solution would be one where even an office worker could be the designated email administrator - updating users, managing shared information, and scheduling resources. Further, each user needs to be able to share folders, calendars and other resources for real-time collaboration, without IT assistance. Then changes can be made quickly even as operational costs decrease.

Right Place, Right Time

SCO has recognized that Microsoft® Exchange® does not meet the needs of most small- to medium-sized businesses. These companies don't need a complex email system designed for companies with thousands of employees and a large dedicated IT staff. Nor do these companies use Microsoft® Exchange® features like Video Conferencing and they don't want to pay the high licensing fees of a product that greatly exceeds their needs. Further, organizations realize the cost of installation, configuration, management and administration ultimately exceed software licensing costs.

Less Is More
In response to the need for a simpler and lower cost alternative to Microsoft Exchange, SCO created the UnixWare® Office Mail Server. This mail server seamlessly integrates with Microsoft® Outlook®, delivering complete email, group scheduling, folder sharing, and calendaring. Cost advantages start with simple one-click installation and configuration onto modest server hardware. Cost savings continue when administration can be performed by almost anyone in the company. Cost savings last when rock-solid reliability keeps the server running for years with minimal intervention. Total cost of ownership, including initial price and long-term administration make UnixWare® Office Mail Server the clear choice for small and medium-sized businesses.

Legal Notice

Copyright © 2003, The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO"). All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be copied or translated to another language without the express written consent of The SCO Group. The SCO documents are provided "as is" and may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. The SCO Group reserves the right to add, delete, change, or modify Caldera documents at any time without notice. The documents are for information only. SCO makes no express or implied representations or warranties of any kind. Caldera International, The SCO Group, SCO, the SCO logos, SCOx, SCObiz, and TeamSCO, are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group. UNIX and UnixWare are used under exclusive license, are registered trademarks of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered marks of the respective companies. Specifications subject to change.