Hence the summary "was big back in the 19th century, but now it seems to be making a high-tech comeback..." I am guessing from that statement that these have been being built for centuries, not just decades. Old news indeed.
I have run Exchange, Groupwise, and Lotus Notes at different large organizations, and have been involved in serveral evaluation commitees comparing mail servers. Here are the categories that, in my experience, have been turing points in decisions.
1.) Managers love Microsoft. They have the best marketing and easiest installation. Groupwise can be problematic to install and never works "out of the box." Notes is a nightmare to install.
2.) Server Security. Exchange has frequent security updates related directly to exchange, IIS or the NT/200X OS. The updates may or may not break your server. If you do the update you may be restoring from backup, if you don't your server, if it is on the internet, WILL be hacked. Groupwise has rarely had a security problem, are quickly patched and NEVER in my experience been hacked. Notes is a nightmare to update its rare security problems.
3.) Client security. Groupwise and Notes clients don't have the security problems that Outlook does. Half of the "features" of the Outlook client seem to be written for virus distribution/backdoor installation/denial of service hacks.
4.) Features. All three systems have enterprise level calendaring/groupware/email/collaboration/document management... and matching client software.
5.) Administration. User administration is just another tab in the normal admin consoles for the server OS in both Exchange and Netware. Notes is a nightmare to administer. All three have feature rich configuration at the group and user level to add limitation and security. Patching/upgrades are relatively painless with Groupwise, troublesome to the point of possibly having to reinstall with Exchange, and a nightmare of features disappearing sending exponentionally increasing random emails to the entire system or just hosing everything up with Notes.
6.) Backup/restore. Arcserve and/or Backup Exec have Groupwise, Exchange and Notes backup solutions to the mailbox level. Restoring the entire mail store/post office/system is not necessary any longer, though that used to be the necessary method for each.
I am now evaluating Openexchange from Suse/Novell and am so far impressed. There are some unpolished features, and it sometimes runs home to its native German language at strange times. The web front end is very usable. The backend mail system is easy-to-configure postfix. Novell has also made Groupwise available on linux, but I haven't had the chance to give it a whirl yet.
The overall winner in my experience as an administrator of these systems has been Groupwise. Managers still love Microsoft and often buy into their marketing regardless of the other considerations. Notes is just a nightmare.
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Hence the summary "was big back in the 19th century, but now it seems to be making a high-tech comeback..." I am guessing from that statement that these have been being built for centuries, not just decades. Old news indeed.
Don't self powered robots that can EAT humans for power give I, Robot an extra creepy feel?
I have run Exchange, Groupwise, and Lotus Notes at different large organizations, and have been involved in serveral evaluation commitees comparing mail servers. Here are the categories that, in my experience, have been turing points in decisions.
t management... and matching client software.
1.) Managers love Microsoft. They have the best marketing and easiest installation. Groupwise can be problematic to install and never works "out of the box." Notes is a nightmare to install.
2.) Server Security. Exchange has frequent security updates related directly to exchange, IIS or the NT/200X OS. The updates may or may not break your server. If you do the update you may be restoring from backup, if you don't your server, if it is on the internet, WILL be hacked. Groupwise has rarely had a security problem, are quickly patched and NEVER in my experience been hacked. Notes is a nightmare to update its rare security problems.
3.) Client security. Groupwise and Notes clients don't have the security problems that Outlook does. Half of the "features" of the Outlook client seem to be written for virus distribution/backdoor installation/denial of service hacks.
4.) Features. All three systems have enterprise level calendaring/groupware/email/collaboration/documen
5.) Administration. User administration is just another tab in the normal admin consoles for the server OS in both Exchange and Netware. Notes is a nightmare to administer. All three have feature rich configuration at the group and user level to add limitation and security. Patching/upgrades are relatively painless with Groupwise, troublesome to the point of possibly having to reinstall with Exchange, and a nightmare of features disappearing sending exponentionally increasing random emails to the entire system or just hosing everything up with Notes.
6.) Backup/restore. Arcserve and/or Backup Exec have Groupwise, Exchange and Notes backup solutions to the mailbox level. Restoring the entire mail store/post office/system is not necessary any longer, though that used to be the necessary method for each.
I am now evaluating Openexchange from Suse/Novell and am so far impressed. There are some unpolished features, and it sometimes runs home to its native German language at strange times. The web front end is very usable. The backend mail system is easy-to-configure postfix. Novell has also made Groupwise available on linux, but I haven't had the chance to give it a whirl yet.
The overall winner in my experience as an administrator of these systems has been Groupwise. Managers still love Microsoft and often buy into their marketing regardless of the other considerations. Notes is just a nightmare.
One thing to note, Caldera did not win that case. Microsoft cut their losses in the midst of the anti-trust lawsuit and settled out of court.