Messaging Delivery Options: Netscape SuiteSpot
Netscape occupies an interesting slot between proprietary groupware and standard Internet messaging, offering an integrated stable of messaging, directory, Web and discussion group servers in its SuiteSpot. Messaging Server, the backbone of Netscape's messaging services, is a native SMTP MTA (message transfer agent) with IMAPv4 and POP3 client-access protocols. Netscape's Calendar, Collabra server and Enterprise server offer calendaring functions and discussion groups. All SuiteSpot servers are tied to Netscape's LDAP directory service, and share user and group information through the directory.

Instead of relying on proprietary protocols, Netscape's strategy is to build a complete groupware and messaging solution from various Internet protocols. As a result, SuiteSpot is a complex animal--various functions are handled by entirely different servers using different protocols. For instance, the messaging server handles mail, another server manages calendar information, the Collabra server handles NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) news and discussion groups, and the Enterprise server handles Web publishing. Netscape's Communicator desktop browser suite ties this complex environment together.

Netscape's product line is still evolving. As the IMAPv4 protocol matures to include shared folders and access-control lists, Netscape plans to merge the functionality of many of these servers into a single messaging server suite. The Netscape Communicator 4.5 series will upgrade IMAP client support, making it possible to manage server-side IMAP folder access-control lists through a convenient drag-and-drop interface.

Netscape's heavy investment in standards brings with it a certain degree of interoperability. Its messaging and discussion servers are open to any client, and Netscape's adoption of S/MIME for secure messaging (and the inclusion of a certificate server within SuiteSpot) lets message-level security interact with other major systems.

Netscape offers a Web interface to users' mailboxes, which is being revamped in the next version (4.0) of SuiteSpot. But Netscape's strategy for supporting roaming users still centers on IMAPv4 clients. Although IMAP leverages native interfaces on users' desktops for a richer interface than that of HTML, it adds the burden of dynamically provisioning clients; user preferences and configuration settings must be downloaded each time a new user logs in. Netscape's strategy is to have the Communicator client suite access the LDAP directory for this configuration information. But there is currently no standard for where and how to store this information in the directory service, which makes Netscape's solution, technically speaking, proprietary. The Application Configuration Access Protocol (ACAP) is designed to solve this problem, but it has no more support among messaging client vendors than Netscape's strategy.