IBM Eye

Slashdot: Linux Desktop Email Key to Success

littlepill writes “It looks as though email clients are vital for Linux to succeed in the desktop battle. ZDNet says, “the lack of a powerful email application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop”. So, even though Novell’s Evolution is one viable and valid product, it seems that there is a clear “message to application vendors to focus on developing a quality email application for the Linux desktop”.” I’m unconvinced- I think webmail will soon be replacing client side readers for all but power users.

I read the ZDNet article referred to: Email ‘crucial’ to desktop Linux’s future

Research from the Open Source Development Labs has found that the take-up of open source on the desktop could falter unless email applications improve

The sad thing is - they only seemed to mention Novell Evolution and Mozilla Thunderbird. There are some alternatives available today, and some very exciting new offerings coming soon from IBM.

The key messages from the articles is that calendaring and scheduling is a critical part of an email infrastructure. Mature groupware has been around on the Windows platform for years now, and companies have come to depend on such functionality. I agree totally - this is extremely important functionality. Lotus Notes has been the market leader, and indeed the technology leader in this space for a long time. Unfortunately, there is no currently supported version of Lotus Notes on Linux. Or is there ?

Let’s look at some options:

Notes on Linux via WINE. This has been a popular, although unsupported option for many years. Many people running Linux on their desktop inside IBM have been using WINE to run Notes for a long time. Apparently it generally works. It is certainly not recommended though - because you won’t get support from IBM if something goes wrong.

Domino WebMail. This is a basic web front-end to a Domino mail server, and Domino also provides POP3 and IMAP support if required. I don’t have much experience with this product, but my understanding is - it is quite low-end and really only suited for situations where you have smaller groups of users who have only occasional needs for basic, low function email. I don’t know if it even has much in the way of calendar integration - and if it did, I imagine it would be basic. This is a cheap option - especially if you already have Domino. I think there are much better options for most users though.

Domino Web Access. This is a vastly under-rated tool that has been around for a long time and is a very popular web-mail solution. I often see it used in conjunction with Notes clients, for when people are offsite and want to be able to check their email via the web. Many of the business partners I work with who are always on client sites and hence can’t replicate their Notes mail, essentially live inside Domino Web Access for accessing their calendaring and scheduling. It’s a very rich interface, very usable, but you do have to watch browser version support. Interestingly, until recently Domino Web Access was supported on Internet Explorer on Windows and Mozilla on Linux, but not Mozilla on Windows - and what’s worse it didn’t even work on Mozilla on Windows. Strange but true. That’s all fixed now, and the latest versions of Domino Web Access support Firefox on both Windows and Linux. Very powerful solution and one well worth considering.

Workplace Messaging. IBM’s Workplace product family includes a messaging server - essentially mail, calendaring and scheduling. Unlike Domino, Workplace Messaging is a fully J2EE application server based solution - it runs on top of WebSphere Portal, which in turn runs on top of WebSphere Application Server. Functionally it is not as complete as a Domino based solution … yet. It’s a relatively new product (especially when compared to Domino), and functionality will improve a lot over the next few versions. The interface is web based, and relatively simple - but it is very tightly integrated in with the portal style interface provided by the Workplace servers.

Workplace Managed Client. For a richer messaging client than provided by the browser based Workplace Messaging interface, you can add an Eclipse based desktop client to your Workplace Messaging server. Self-deploying, self-managing, standards based, with a secure encrypted datastore on the client, offline support, and tight integration with the backend servers. The email functionality provided through the Workplace Managed Client is not a strong as a Lotus Notes client yet - but again, there’s 20 years of development to catch up on here. The great thing about the Workplace Managed Client is the very low cost of ownership for a client based solution, and the fact that it runs on Windows and Linux (and soon the Mac as well). The Workplace Managed Client is a strategic offering from IBM and is critical to the Portal and Workplace family of solutions - integration with those server platforms and the ability for the managed client to become a client-side application delivery platform itself are key features.

Lotus Notes v7 plus Workplace Managed Client plugin. I’m not sure if it has been released yet, but at Lotusphere 2005, there was a lot of buzz around about an interim solution that was being developed to allow Notes clients to run on Linux in a supported manner. Essentially, they built functionality into Lotus Notes v7.0 clients that when combined with the Workplace Managed Client and a special plugin that linked the two together, you could actually run your Lotus Notes applications, including mail and calendaring, through the Workplace Managed Client interface. What’s more, you could also do this on Linux! This effectively brings us a working solution for Notes on Linux - and it’s due to be available any time now (I think). We have been running some internal trials of this solution for Windows client platforms at IBM, and from what I’ve seen of it (I don’t have access to it yet - still waiting for it to be provisioned to me) … it is very very slick.

“Hannover”, aka Lotus Notes v8?. The next major release of Lotus Notes, codenamed “Hannover” will feature a completely new UI and will be deployed on an Eclipse platform. This will have Windows, Linux, and hopefully Mac support for the extremely rich functionality of Lotus Notes. The only problem? It’s still a couple of years away. If you haven’t heard about Hannover yet, let me know and I’ll chase up some of the screenshots that have been circulating on the internet.

So in summary - there are plenty of options for messaging on Linux now, and even more coming soon. This is critical to IBM - indeed, we are gearing up internally to a move to Linux desktops sometime over the next few years, so you will continue to see more developments in this area.

If you want more information on the current offerings from Lotus in this space, there’s a good guide available on the IBM website: IBM Messaging product family guide (pdf)