Hello, my name is Julie Hanna Farris and I'm the founder ofScalix. Scalix has developed a Linux-based e-mail platform and today I'm goingto talk about two topics that get a lot of airtime, but not necessarily in thesame conversation: e-mail and Linux.
Now we all know Linux is hot, and e-mail is something thatwe live and die by. It's the most widely-deployed application in the world.Killer apps are things that drive adoption of new platforms. Remember Lotus 123and the PC revolution, for example. Now there's a lot of advantages about Linuxthat lend it to e-mail and things you'll hear about Linux -- betterreliability, better security, better price performance. What does that mean inthe context of e-mail? Better reliability means less downtime. Better securitymeans less risk. Better price performance means lower TCO. These are all thingsthat organizations grapple with today around mail, security holes, downtime inmail, cost of e-mail.
Now there is such a growing recognition of these advantagesthat in fact 55% of organizations have indicated they are going to evaluate adeploy mail on Linux in the next couple of years, and 21% have said that theywould prefer Linux as a starting point. And the beauty with Linux is thateveryone gets what they want, end-users, IT organizations and management, soend-users can continue to use the mail client of their choice: Outlook,Evolution, Mozilla or Firefox for Web mail, IE, Pop, Imap, Linux, Unix,Windows, Mac. No change to the user. No disruption. IT gets what they wantrunning the e-mail infrastructure on Linux and all the advantages with lessdowntime, less risk, and less TCO. And management is happy because their riskand costs are reduced.
So now you're probably right about now thinking that thissounds too good to be true and even if it's true conceptually, do Linux mailsystems really give me what I have today in terms of functionality or am Ilooking at trading some of that functionality off and if I can't get the samefunctionality what about migration. So the answer to the first question is yes,Linux-based mail systems do absolutely give you the level of functionality thatwe've all come to know and expect today, and what if I were to tell you thatyou could actually migrate e-mail to a Linux system in a way that wascompletely non-disruptive and transparent to your users and what does thatmean. Non-disruptive means that users don't have any downtime. They always haveaccess to mail even during migration. It means no data loss. All the mail inthe calendar data, all that integrity is retained. It means no functionalityloss.
With all of these factors coming together, everyone trulydoes get what they want, and users get what they want, IT organizations getwhat they want, management gets what they want. So if your organization isconsidering alternatives for e-mail it's in your best interests to considerLinux-based systems, and in doing so you too will realize why e-mail has apotential to be the killer app for Linux.
