Re: Yet another X.400 vs SMTP question

[[e-mail]]

>In the PC world we look at where the developers are moving to try to
>figure out where the future may be.  I do not understand why, if X.400 is so
>marvelous, there is so little software for it?  Why no insanely great
>software for the X.400 world?  Why are private corporations not risking
>their capital on this standard?  Which standards have earned the respect
>of private capital?

I suspect that this is as much due to the balance of where PC
software is sold as the technological issues. The vast majority of
PC products, including e-mail, are sold to small organisations for
whom proprietry, isolated implementations are completly accptable.
(I am afraid that I do not have the figues to hand but when I last
looked, about a month ago, they were impressive.)

When one tries to scale up the technology to large organisations
conducting intra- or inter-organisation business transaction using
e-mail, one finds that the proprietry implementations do not cut it
due to factors like the heterogeneous nature of large-organisation
DP, security and consistent level-of-service requirements. Of course,
in time, the small organisations will find that they need to do business
via e-mail will the large ones and will discover the problems of
the proprietry approaches.

So, I suggest that the current PC mass-marketplace does not well serve
the interests of wide-area communications. A pity, given its power.

Alan.