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Nearly two years ago, microsoft pre-announced its entry into the groupware market, hoping to get a piece of the action created by Lotus Development's Notes. Now the company is finally preparing to ship its product, but a look at Release Candidate 2 of Microsoft Exchange raises a question: Does Exchange really compete with Lotus Notes? The short answer: "Maybe." On the surface, the two products have some similarities and share some of the same functions. For example, both products have programmable forms, and both allow information to be posted to discussion groups and shared with other people. But Exchange and Notes take fundamentally different approaches to sharing information across an organization.
In the most basic terms, Microsoft Exchange is an electronic messaging system; Notes is a database. Like Notes, Exchange can be used to share information, and it ties tightly to other parts of Microsoft's Back-Office administration suite. But it lacks the workflow capabilities and agent technology of Notes. While Exchange has Internet mail capabilities, its other Net features-World Wide Web publishing in particular-lag behind those of Notes.
Notes has the advantage of multiple server and client platforms, with servers for Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 95, Novell NetWare, IBM OS/2, and several Unix platforms, and clients for 16- and 32-bit Windows, Apple Macintosh, OS/2, and several Unix operating systems. Microsoft can claim multiplatform support only on the client side, with support for 16- and 32-bit Windows and the Mac.
Exchange does have some things in its favor. Since it runs only on Windows NT, Exchange can take advantage of many features of that operating system that Notes, as a multiplatform product, cannot. Exchange also is easier to administer and integrate with other Microsoft server and desktop applications and has better support for specialized application development through Microsoft's Visual Basic.
So, despite the marketing messages of both Lotus and Microsoft, the common ground occupied by Notes and Exchange is a relatively narrow strip.
Microsoft Exchange
Exchange is the successor to the Microsoft Mail line of electronic messaging products. As a result, it carries with it all the heritage of an E-mail product; its client is called an Inbox, and information in the Exchange environment is organized in a hierarchy of mailboxes and folders. Microsoft Mail...