* Think thin when looking for messaging clients
Thin messaging clients and alternative messaging servers are not exactly a new idea, but the capabilities inherent in the new generation of these systems are making them ever more viable for enterprises and smaller organizations alike. Here are some examples of such thin clients:
* The Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.0, for example, integrates e-mail, a shared calendar, a contact database, VoIP, document sharing, mobile device synchronization and other capabilities. The open source offering makes good use of Web services to provide a rich user experience that is the equal of just about any traditional client available today.
* Scalix 11, a Linux-based messaging system, integrates with Outlook and Novell Evolution, but also provides a rich Web-based interface that includes calendaring, mailbox searching, a contact database, calendaring and other capabilities.
* Mirapoint offers its Message Server that provides Outlook integration and a Webmail interface. Message Server includes collaboration capability, including scheduling, calendaring and an address database.
* Microsoft sells the leading server-based/thick client messaging system in use today and offers Office Live Essentials, which includes a variety of e-mail and collaboration services, as well as several business applications and Web services.
There are many other Web-based messaging and collaboration tools not mentioned here that provide viable alternatives to the thick clients that most of us use today.
From a user perspective, the clear advantage of thin clients is their inherent portability and their availability on virtually any platform. That means that a user can access his or her desktop, messages, collaboration tools and other capabilities in the office, at home or on the road with an identical experience every time. For IT, thin clients make life dramatically easier, since clients do not have to be rolled out during a messaging system migration, patches don’t need to be installed on client machines, there is no local software to be corrupted and the user experience can be managed more easily.
What is the role of thin messaging and collaboration clients in your organization? As an IT administrator, why do you or don’t you want to deploy thin clients? As a user, what is your view on using Web-based tools instead of the thick clients that you’ve been using all these years? Please let me know your thoughts.
