A report for Novell

by David Strom

David Strom, Inc.

david@strom.com

(516) 944-3407

25 November 1996

1. Summary and conclusions

Microsoft's Exchange 4.0 and Novell's GroupWise 5.0 are going after the same kinds of applications and potential customers. Both products enable enterprise-wide messaging and group collaboration using a variety of clients and servers that can connect across both local and wide-area links. Both products, when you consider their precursors in Microsoft Mail and WordPerfect Office, have seen a great deal of feature enhancement over the years, and both support a wide variety of clients.

Our task was a head-to-head comparison of both features and usability, from the perspective of an enterprise system administrator as well as from an end-user of average abilities. However, the announcement and imminent release of Microsoft's Outlook complicated our task. Outlook is a new piece of software that comes included with Microsoft's Office 97 suite and scheduled to ship by the end of 1996 for Windows 95 and NT clients, later in 1997 for Macintosh and maybe never for Windows 3.x.

If we were to compare what presently is part of just GroupWise and Exchange, we would judge GroupWise the overall functional winner. Exchange has fewer features, although for what it has, it operates reasonably well. GroupWise is the tool to use if any group scheduling activities are an important part of one's computing life, and it has done a superior job of integrating these activities into its client. Scheduling has so long been a part of GroupWise that many analysts take its integration for granted.

Outlook changes this assessment significantly. It catches up functionally with GroupWise, adding the group scheduling integration and document management features that had been lacking in Exchange. (Prior to Outlook, Microsoft used Schedule+ as a separate scheduling product that worked in conjunction with Exchange clients.) However, by adding new features, Outlook becomes more difficult to use than GroupWise, and its "unified field theory" of having a single user interface to do various tasks will take some getting used to. This is especially true for those corporate users that are still somewhat befuddled over the difference between File and Program Manager in Windows 3.1. Another factor is that Outlook is brand-new, and for the most part untested.

What is perhaps most noteworthy is that Outlook continues the trend of being very tightly integrated into the other Office suite of products -- for example, Exchange has been able to use Word for composing messages. The new version of Office has added further components, such as charting and drawing functions, which are now serviced by the appropriate Office application.

For all these reasons, we would judge Outlook to be close to GroupWise in features, and that Outlook has a promising future once Microsoft can polish the product. The summary table below describes the specific features of Exchange, GroupWise, and Outlook.

Features summary table

Both companies' products are complex and feature-rich, and both products will do the job they advertise. All three products make extensive use of a vast army of dynamic-linked libraries, protocols, and other underpinnings of the operating system software, making them all hard to troubleshoot and hard to maintain. For example, we repeatedly had problems with our test systems as we went about the process of comparing them for this review: at several points during our tests, we had to reinstall software, reboot servers, and clean up after the mess we had inadvertently made. None of the three products is for an inexperienced administrator.

Indeed, each product is closely tied to its heritage operating system, and that heritage (either NetWare or NT) brings both good and bad points to GroupWise, Outlook and Exchange. We are not alone in this view: Dave Molta, the IS manager for Syracuse University's network, wrote in his "Net Results" column in Network Computing magazine (10/1/96) that "[Exchange] is too tightly coupled to Windows NT's greatest weaknesses, including lack of a modern directory service." We believe that GroupWise is also too tightly coupled to NetWare's greatest weaknesses as well, including the need to upgrade various other NetWare Loadable Modules (NLMs) before one can run GroupWise.

Our tests were plagued with lots of problems in installing and maintaining the software. Our biggest problems were getting the various pieces of each product to work together. Novell's GroupWise has many different NetWare loadable modules and client-side software that need to fit together with some effort. Exchange needs a corresponding set of software on both client and NT server sides.

The rest of the report describes our conclusions on ease-of-use, Internet and remote connectivity, and various other functions of the three products. Our test environment and overall installation issues is described in the last section of this report.

2. Ease-of-use

We examined doing common tasks with both the client and server portions of each product. Overall, we found GroupWise to have an advantage in ease of use on the client side, but the products on the server side were close in terms of ease-of-use.

2a. Client software: configuration, navigation and appearance. Advantage: GroupWise.

The 32-bit clients of both GroupWise and Exchange have similar appearances, although the looks can be somewhat deceptive. Both have the two-panel windows that look like Windows Explorer: categories or folders on the left, individual messages on the right.

GroupWise has two alternative views of the desktop: one called "quick views" that brings up a third pane at the bottom of the screen, which is useful for displaying the contents of documents and quickly scanning messages. There is another view of the GroupWise desktop that is employed by the 16-bit client, using different buttons for the various types of messages (inbox, calendar items, etc.). This is the "classic" interface that has been used by previous GroupWise versions, and is shown in this screen shot.

We like the new GroupWise interface: it is easy to figure out the various tasks and tools, and many operations are just a mouse click away from the main screen. Message types are grouped logically, and you have complete control over how they are displayed. However, it does take some learning, and is not as intuitive as the Exchange interface. Navigating around the basic tasks in Exchange is simple, mainly because it doesn't do as much as the GroupWise client so it is hard to get lost.

However, Exchange isn't a complete slam-dunk in the ease-of-use department. Its biggest opportunity is also its biggest problem: there are so many client messaging-related pieces that come bundled with other Microsoft and Windows applications that it is hard to tell what version of software you are actually using. There is the default Windows Messaging software that provides the same look and feel (although a subset of features) as the actual Exchange client, and then there is the new Outlook client that comes with Office 97. Once you figure out the right version of software you want, Exchange is very easy to install, setup, and use.

Outlook is another matter entirely. We had a difficult time installing the software, most likely because we were using a beta version. It has a very different interface from anything that Microsoft has done, taking the best of many different products and combining them into a very rich desktop. Outlook has drop-down boxes, Internet Explorer v.3-like floating tool bars, movable title bars and all other sorts of interface tricks that will make an experienced user very productive -- once s/he learns what to push and click on.

We think that this interface will become popular as users get to understand it better -- but our initial impression was more of confusion. Indeed, the number of options to be set can be quite daunting, as this screen shot shows.

Outlook lies at the center of three previous pieces of software that Microsoft has been using for various browsing and office tasks: Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and the Exchange client. It combines functions of all three in interesting ways that will allow users to view files, compose messages, and surf the web from a single user interface. An overall screen shot of Outlook is shown here. You can use Outlook as the client portion and talk to an Exchange server for your messaging and scheduling needs, replacing the use of the combination of Exchange client and Schedule+ software on your desktop. At least, that is the theory that Microsoft is proposing.

Because the GroupWise client uses the same Windows messaging structure that is used by the Microsoft clients, you can actually use Exchange to work with mail on the GroupWise post office. However, non-email message types, such as appointments, calendar items, and tasks won't appear in the Exchange client's view. (Our screen shots show views from Exchange and GroupWise client of the same mailbox. Note how appointments and tasks don't appear in the Exchange view of the mailbox.)

What about navigating around the desktop? One feature that is in both Exchange and GroupWise is the ability to type just a few letters of someone's name and have the software figure out who you really want to send a message to. This saves time and also reassures one that the recipient is actually recognized by the post office. GroupWise goes a step further, by providing a list of "frequent contacts" inside the address book. This is a nice place to keep track of your correspondents, and to our knowledge not found in Outlook.

Outlook, as we've stated previously, has a completely different appearance. You have even more control over the look and feel of your desktop than with either GroupWise or Exchange, you can drag title bars around and move panes, and right-click your way to sort columns and so forth. The choices in the left-hand pane can easily be switched between an Explorer-like view of your desktop folders and files to your inbox with just a single mouse click, and the menus change to the appropriate context (showing the "Compose" menu when you are viewing your Inbox, for example). While initially confusing, we think people will be attracted to this interface over time.

As an example, one nice feature of Outlook is what Microsoft calls "auto-previewing" unread messages - this shows the first line of the message underneath the actual message. Compare this to how GroupWise does it with opening a third window in its "Quick View" at the bottom of the screen. It is a small difference, but one that we feel will become attractive to power users that spend the majority of their computing days doing email.

However, on balance, we think GroupWise has the best all-around user interface for the greatest range of users. Everything that is needed is in easy reach of mouse or menu, and not hidden behind options dialogs. We do think that many users will grow accustomed to Outlook and that other vendors will adopt some of its tricks in 1997-8.

2b. Administrative tools: tie between Exchange and GroupWise.

Exchange's primary administrative tool is the Exchange Administrator, which runs on either NT workstation or server machines. If you want to add new Exchange users from User Manager for Domains, you need to install Exchange Administrator on every NT server or workstation. This is about 6 megabytes' worth of software. This puts a new "Exchange" menu choice in the "User Manager for Domains" software, which is the main piece of administrative software that NT uses to add and modify user information. The Administrator software does not work on Windows 95. Without Exchange Administrator, you can still add users to an NT domain, but they won't have any Exchange information and mailboxes associated with each user. This can get somewhat confusing.

The Exchange Administrator presents a list of choices in the same style of views as Windows Explorer or indeed, the Exchange client itself. There are categories for user configurations, connections (both to other Exchange post offices and to external mail systems such as Internet SMTP servers), address lists, and shared folders. Clicking on each left-hand category brings up a series of tabbed dialog boxes for the appropriate action. It is fairly intuitive and simple, once you understand the structure.

There are some important options that Microsoft has put together in its Administrator program: here are two that were noteworthy, one good and one bad:

• The ability to automatically create mailbox IDs from user names according to a certain schema. For example, if the naming scheme for your IDs is to use first name, last initial (e.g., DavidS), you can set this up in the "Options, AutoNaming" box. This is a good thing, and can save some time as well as keep consistent naming convention throughout an enterprise.

• The ability to only view mailboxes from a single post office at one time. If you want to view multiple post offices, you have to connect to each server individually, and bring up a separate window inside the Administrator. This is fallout from NT's domain naming scheme, and a negative.

The primary administrative tool for GroupWise is part of the overall NetWare administrator software that works best on Windows 95. However, one must first add Client32 software from Novell to replace the Microsoft IPX protocols. One drawback is that there are other bits and pieces that aren't completely part of the NetWare Administrator, such as the GroupWise SMTP and Web Access gateways, which make use of DOS-based software for their configuration.

You administer GroupWise post offices by clicking on the post office icon that appears in the directory tree window. You have several different screens that are part of a new series of GroupWise-oriented menus under "Tools" -- including one for managing detailed GroupWise system operations (such as setting up time zones and external links). For those system administrators that would rather view GroupWise directories in something other than the usual NetWare Directory Services (NDS) tree view, there is a special view that basically shows which users are associated with which GroupWise post offices. The advantage of this screen is that you can examine your entire messaging structure in a single screen, something that is more cumbersome with Exchange. There are additional menus for GroupWise utilities as well. All of this is rather straightforward.

Perhaps the most-used administrative function is the ability to add new users to the email system. Here is how both products work:

Adding users in Exchange is simple if you are starting from scratch with a new NT server and setup. However, it is not very simple if you have an existing domain controller with user accounts. You have to go through a fairly cumbersome database import process, as a consequence of NT's domain-model. Because there is no enterprise-wide name space equivalent for NDS, you need to export each NT domain servers' user account structure into a comma-separated file and then import these user names into Exchange's recipient list. This is done as part of Exchange Administrator program and is clumsy, to say the least.

Exchange's user database is very closely coupled with NT's user database -- which is both good and bad.

There are two ways (apart from the importing and exporting process described above) to add users to Exchange. First, if you have installed the Exchange Administrator software on the proper computer, another series of screens will appear for the Exchange information when you run User Manager and after you finish entering the user's name and password. Or you can enter just the Exchange user information without adding new NT domain user accounts directly within the Exchange Administrator program. Finally, you can create NT accounts as you add Exchange users. In any event, you get to the same series of screens. If you have a site with many NT domain servers and different series of accounts, this can be cumbersome.

Adding users in GroupWise is done with the NetWare Administrator client software. This is one of the reasons that GroupWise requires a NetWare 4.x server for administrative purposes. GroupWise adds four tabbed pages to each user's account information: Accounts, Nicknames, Aliases, and X.400 Information. Of the four, the GroupWise Accounts tab is the one that you'll probably spend the most time with. It automatically creates a mailbox ID that is the same as the NetWare ID for the user, and here you specify which post office will serve that user and whether or not to prohibit any gateway access for that user.

Using the NetWare client seems to us to be a more intuitive situation, but only for those corporations that have a good grasp of NDS and already have some experience using this tool. It offers the promise of having a single place to go to administer all users and all servers, as long as those users and servers aren't on NT servers. For those that are still new to NDS and still using NetWare binderies and 3.x servers, it will take some learning and could be as cumbersome as the Exchange user process.

The difference is more one of semantics, but Microsoft is focussed first on providing and connecting to servers, while Novell is focussed first on tracking and maintaining information about users. There are some corporations that would find one or the other appealing, depending on their circumstances. For these reasons, we judge both administrative products a tie.

Outlook is only client-side software, so there is no server component outside of the Exchange Administrator.

3. Internet, remote connectivity

3a. Internet connectivity: All products unsatisfactory.

There are two parts of the Internet picture for both products: the ability to send and receive messages via Internet SMTP post offices and the ability to use web browsers as clients to compose messages and other tasks. Both products do reasonably well in the first area but are lacking in the second.

First, let's look at Internet SMTP gateways. GroupWise uses a DOS-based administration routine to connect its post office to a SMTP server. (However, the SMTP gateway itself runs as an NLM.) Exchange uses another NT service, which is administered under the Exchange Administrator, Connections rubric. Exchange's SMTP service is only included as part of the "Enterprise" packaging of the product, and it is an actual sendmail server.

These work relatively well, but they are gateways, meaning that messages occasionally get mangled for various reasons (the sender is using an incompatible MIME type, or going through his or her own gateway that creates other problems). It would be nice if both Microsoft and Novell took these Internet gateway administrative functions and incorporated them into the native post office routines of their products, however.

Microsoft goes a step further and has put a POP client feature into Exchange and Outlook. This means that upon filling out a simple dialog box, one can use either product to send and receive Internet mail directly. While interesting, as a practical matter neither product has the full range of POP mail options that a client such as Qualcomm's Eudora has (for example, the ability to read mail but leave all messages on the server). Still, this shows some positive signs for Microsoft. GroupWise does not have this feature in the client.

GroupWise Web Access is the name of the part of the product that provides web browser client access. This is implemented with a series of NLMs that connect to any web server, such as Novell's own or NT-based web servers. As with Microsoft's NT web server, Novell now bundles its web server with newer copies of NetWare. Getting Web Access configured took some careful understanding of web and GroupWise concepts, as well as tracking down some pesky configuration files that are not well documented.

Exchange's web client is not part of the current 4.0 release of the server, but will be included in the 4.5 beta that is imminently available. You'll only be able to use Microsoft's Internet Information Server as the web server, just as GroupWise only works with Novell's own web server. And unlike Novell's web client that works with a wide range of browsers, Exchange's web client only works on browsers that support frames and JavaScript -- which limits its appeal somewhat. We did not test this software ourselves, however.

Both web clients support a subset of features that can be found in the true Windows clients, and this is really where the rubber meets the road. Exchange's web client, for example, does not support sending file attachments, nor does it have any way to look up names in the Exchange address book. GroupWise's web client has other flaws. Both web clients need to support the complete function set of the Windows-based clients and for this reason, we have judged all three products unsatisfactory and given none any particular advantage here.

3b. Remote connectivity: Three-way tie.

Both GroupWise and Exchange have made it easier for remote users to take their work with them on the road, indeed, in GroupWise this feature is actually called "hit the road." Exchange has something functionally similar, although it works somewhat differently: upon startup it asks the user whether to work offline or connect to a server.

In previous versions of both products, remote access was something of a bear to manage. The current versions of both GroupWise and Exchange have improved things tremendously, and we judge them tied in terms of functionality.

Outlook's remote connectivity is basically similar to Exchange as far as we could tell from our beta. There are a few nice enhancements, including the ability to selectively mark and retrieve messages and a floating remote toolbar, but for the most part this is just Exchange dressed up in a nicer suit. Like GroupWise, you can connect across the Internet via an IP link to send and receive your messages.

4. Functional comparison

The heart of any messaging product is the ability to perform various tasks. We examine several. Overall, GroupWise is ahead, but this advantage will be only temporary, until Microsoft Outlook ships. Outlook narrows the feature gap between GroupWise and Exchange.

 GroupWise has long had what we've called the "save your job" feature of being able to recall any unread messages, ever since the early days of Word Perfect Office. Now Microsoft has begun to implement this same feature in Outlook, including two parameters that can be set as part of the Options/ Sending menu. The two choices are to notify when messages have been delivered, and notify the sender when they have been read. We could not find any message recall feature in Outlook, however Microsoft claims it will be part of the product. Exchange does not have this feature.

Both Microsoft and Novell offer the ability to set up proxy users, or others that are trusted to read and send messages on your behalf. All three products offer the ability to search for text within the body of messages, and both GroupWise and Outlook have some fairly sophisticated rules management and filtering capabilities.

Exchange and Outlook both have a nice feature of being able to view more than a single mailbox on the screen concurrently. While nice, most people are quite content with a single mailbox.

All three products have the ability to view attached messages with various external viewers: the beta we tested of Outlook could not open JPEG files although both Exchange and GroupWise could. GroupWise places attachments in a separate place underneath the message body itself, while both Outlook and Exchange put the file and icon as part of the message body.

Both Outlook and GroupWise can handle a mixture of other message types besides email and treat them with equal attention: you can move, forward, file and do other tasks with appointments, notes, and documents. Exchange is limited to keeping track of email for the most part.

Overall, we think that the features offered in both GroupWise and Outlook are fairly close. We judge these two products tied.

The biggest advantage that GroupWise has is its integrated calendaring and scheduling feature, something that has been part and parcel of the product for many years. Microsoft presently uses Schedule+ as its calendaring module, but it is not well integrated into the Exchange software. With GroupWise, scheduling a meeting is just another message type, and the actions a user takes are quite similar to composing email: you pick from the same address dialog boxes, and send using the same dialogs. A request for a meeting and a confirmation shows up in your inbox. You can also view a timeline to see if the intended participants are busy or not for the time period in question.

Outlook will do a better job of incorporating in scheduling features and be closer to GroupWise in terms of functionality. Included in Outlook are the following features that were previously found in Schedule+:

• views of several different calendars (such as an entire week),
• a "meeting planner" function which can examine whether all intended participants are free at a given time (something that GroupWise has had for some time),
• a function to track whether invitees have responded to the request for attending a meeting (again, a long-time GroupWise feature).

While using Outlook is certainly easier than using two products (Schedule+ and Exchange) for calendar-related functions, Outlook is not as polished as GroupWise. Because Outlook is still new and untested, we judge GroupWise as the leader with calendar and scheduling-related features.

In GroupWise 5, Novell has improved upon the ability of GroupWise to track conversations. You can sort any column in any folder by merely right-clicking on its heading and specifying the sort order. This makes following a particular message thread fairly simple.

In Exchange, you customize your desktop by defining a "personal view" by choosing an option under the Tools menu. This contains the order of the columns displayed in the right-hand pane, how they are grouped, and any filters you wish to apply. This is more cumbersome than the method used by GroupWise. Exchange comes with a pre-set "conversations" view, which orders the messages in your inbox according to the subject thread.

Outlook has a variety of ways to view conversations: First off, there is a menu choice, under Views, that sorts the columns according to conversation topic with a single mouse click. There is also a more involved method, using a Define Views menu that gives users complete control over how information is displayed in the inbox. A third method is to use a drop down menu on the toolbar that lets you organize messages or other items in nice ways. And lastly, you can right-click on column headings to bring up another series of menus to control the display of information. That's a lot of choices, and chances are that some users will prefer one of these methods in Outlook. But GroupWise has a far more consistent and easier method to customize at will the view of its desktop with a simple right-mouse click, and many users will prefer this method as well. It is hard to say which set of methods will win more converts, so we have judged a tie ! between Outlook and GroupWise in this category.

In both products, users can create folders and set access rights to share them with others. Folders in both GroupWise and Exchange can hold just about anything, including documents, messages, and appointments. In addition, Outlook has a feature called "journals" that will be able to include everything that you can drag from the desktop, including email, document references and other items. These journals have a nice display, and have a more intuitive feel for assembling together various projects than the standard GroupWise mailbox.

Sharing folders in GroupWise is very simple: you merely right-click on the folder in your filing cabinet that you wish to share: you get a dialog box that asks what users you wish to grant access. You can choose to give your colleagues a range of options from full access to limiting them to just reading your items. At this point, a message is sent informing them of your generosity. All items placed in this folder previously aren't shared, however, which is somewhat confusing.

GroupWise has the ability to check-in and check-out documents from pre-specified libraries. This ensures that only a single user is editing a particular version at any given moment. While not as capable as Lotus Notes' document sharing features, it does provide some rudimentary collaboration. GroupWise also provides a helpful log of who opened what version of which document when.

We think there are good things in both GroupWise and Outlook and we prefer the journal feature in Outlook for organizing documents over the library system in GroupWise. However, GroupWise offers much more functionality than Outlook in the way of document management, such as the ability to do full-text indexing of documents, checking documents in and out of libraries, and version control. For these reasons, we give GroupWise the advantage for document sharing and management features.

A messaging product is only as good as its underlying directory. Ideally, you would like to be able to search on a phone number or other vital statistics about a user, and be able to add your own entries to the address book at will. Sometimes the address book really serves the role of a contact manager, while other times it is more of a directory of things rather than people - is a conference room available for a meeting? Or exactly where is the closest secretary to someone on the fifth floor?

GroupWise has a clear advantage leveraging off NDS: Once you have set up NDS, you have effectively set up GroupWise, provided that you are using the latest NetWare 4.11 software from Novell. And NDS has plenty of fields and horsepower to provide some of the contact management functions. That is the good news.

If you are new to NDS and NetWare 4.x (and there are still many NetWare shops that are), then setting up GroupWise will take some careful study about how trees, containers, and objects are handled and configured. You'll have a chore on your hands to upgrade your clients to the latest software, and you'll need a solid Windows 95 machine with Novell's Client32 software to do the administration. Finally, someone will have to enter all the information for each user to turn NDS into a contact manager, which could be tedious.

However, NT is still far from a full citizen in NDS. While Novell has Client32 software for NT, it is relatively recent and in our opinion still somewhat buggy. That is a big negative, and why we have judged GroupWise unacceptable when it comes to directory services.

Microsoft, despite marketing claims to the contrary, doesn't have an enterprise directory with its NT domains and thus relies on Exchange to deliver this functionality. When you add a new user to an NT domain, you don't really supply much in the way of information besides a user name and a password. The remaining contact information (such as phone number, physical address and the like) is all part and parcel of the Exchange extensions to the NT domain system.

We had all sorts of problems getting our various NT servers and workstations to communicate across domains. Part of the reason is our own lack of experience and part is the miserable tools that Microsoft makes available. Because of these issues, we judge Exchange unacceptable as well when it comes to directory services. Certainly, Novell is further ahead of Microsoft when it comes to enterprise directories. However, neither is at the point where they should be, and maintaining directories is far too much of a chore than it could be for both company's products.

4f. Supported platforms: Advantage: GroupWise.

For any corporate network administrator, a critical function of any enterprise messaging system is the ability to support the mixed bag of clients and servers presently owned and operated. GroupWise brings a much wider functionality to this than is present in the Exchange/Outlook package from Microsoft. Microsoft is aiming their sights on 32-bit Windows desktops: while they will eventually offer support on other platforms, their corporate focus is NT and Windows 95. Forget about 16-bit Windows: these clients will have to make do without Outlook, and continue to use the 16-bit Exchange clients.

When it comes to clients, GroupWise supports all versions of Windows, although the 16-bit clients still sport the older "classic" user interface of GroupWise 4.

What about servers? With Exchange, the story is simple: Exchange server only runs on NT Server, and that isn't going to change anytime soon.

Novell, on the other hand, has always made a solid effort towards supporting a heterogeneous environment and this shows with GroupWise. While you need a NetWare 4.11 server to run the directory portion of GroupWise, all other functions can be run on either NetWare or NT servers. That is a nice touch, although it would be nice if Novell could offer the ability to host NDS on top of NT sometime soon.

Both Exchange/Outlook and GroupWise offer two different connection paths between client and server: either being able to see a drive mapping across a LAN using IPX, or connecting via IP (which can be done across the Internet if necessary). A third connection is via remote dial-up.

We feel GroupWise has the clear advantage here: it offers more flexibility in its connections, server platforms, and clients than either Exchange or Outlook.

5. Documentation

We could not evaluate the quality of documentation since none of the products came with much in the way of printed manuals. (Our beta copy of Outlook came via CD, the GroupWise copy came directly from Novell on disk as well.) Online help is available for each product, and while we learned a few things using it, the online help is still is fairly basic stuff. Therefore, we have not made any particular judgement about documentation.

6. How we tested.

We examined production versions available in late September 1996: GroupWise 5.0 and Exchange 4.0 servers and clients on a variety of Windows NT, 3.1 and 95 machines. All equipment was connected together on a single 10-megabit Ethernet network segment, with several NetWare 4.11, NT 4.0 and NT 3.51 servers. We also ran Outlook, GroupWise and Exchange clients on NT 4.0 workstations. We installed two different protocol configurations for our client machines: the Novell Client32 add-in software and the supplied Microsoft operating systems software without any Novell add-ons in our tests. We found that GroupWise requires the former, while Exchange and Outlook work best with the latter configuration.

 Although both products potentially support Macintosh clients, we did not test this as part of this analysis.

The Exchange server runs four main NT services: the Directory, the Message Transfer Agent, the Information Store, and the System Attendant. There are other services that are run for external mail connections, such as to SMTP Internet mail servers. The GroupWise server runs four NetWare Loadable Modules: the Message Transfer Agent (GWMTA.NLM), Post Office Agent (GWPOA.NLM), the Administration Agent (GWADA.NLM), and another support NLM (GWENN1.NLM). The first three agents can alternatively run on NT or Unix servers, although we would recommend that anyone seriously considering GroupWise should run it on NetWare servers. There are other NLMs that are used to provide web client access, which connect GroupWise servers to web servers running on a wide variety of platforms including NetWare and NT. Finally, GroupWise makes use of a single NetWare server for its directory services.

And that is just the server side: each client has a mass of software as well that can easily consume 15 or 20 megabytes of disk space.

We also examined a beta copy of Microsoft's Outlook, which was installed on both NT and Windows 95 machines.

We ran into several odd problems with this simple configuration with both Exchange and GroupWise products, including applications that would crash or generate general protection faults, and clients that would not connect to servers. After speaking to both Novell and Microsoft representatives, we could not determine the causes of these problems.

Just so our own perspective is clear, our background is as a long-time user of various versions of both products. We have used Microsoft email software since they purchased the Courier product in the late1980s, and have been on and off GroupWise since it was first called Word Perfect Office in a similar time period. Our present production corporate email system is entirely POP2/SMTP based, using Eudora clients and Unix mail servers.