atkins@hpindda.HP.COM (Brian Atkins) (12/23/89)
Many E-Mail providers, such as TeleMail, ATTMAIL, MCIMail, all provide E-Mail to FAX service. Many provide X.400 and other E-Mail interfaces (like UUCP/UNIX/RFC.822 mail) to their own protocols, which in turn can go out via their FAX access units. In addition, X.400 is becoming a check-off item for many European companies, and for many major U.S. companies as well. With the extensions in the 1988 X.400 standards for interworking with Postal Systems, FAX, telex, teletex, and an API standard for gateway and application interfaces to X.400, E-Mail is finally becoming global. HP, DEC, Microsoft and other major companies are committed to X.400 as either a mail backbone, or as a gateway service to/from their own mail systems. (I hesitate to put IBM in this list because they offer it at a prohibitive price, and then only because certain markets demand it. If it was up to IBM, with world would be PROFS.) X.400 also has the capability to handle multi-media documents. Research in many companies is currently looking at E-Mail <=> voice mail gateways, among other gateways. This doesn't require any new technology or terminals. Dial a number using your existing phone, record a message, when you're done you have a file on your disk full of digitized voice. It's possible with technology already developed and available from any voice mail vendor. Finally, with revisions to the remote User Agent protocol (P3) and the addition of the Message Store and it's protocol (P7), public MHS service can be a reality. This is different than what is currently provided from ATTMail, Telemail, Comp-u-serv, etc. in that it is a standard. Software can be mass produced by many different vendors, shrink wrapped, and sold in shopping malls. Then, anything with a modem and software can talk a form of E-Mail which 95% of the world's E-Mail users can access, either directly or through gateways. Once we have common X.400 MHS service (P3/P7) available, machines with LCD displays, keyboards and a phone jack can be developed, shrink wrapped, and sold in malls just like FAX machines. Unfortunately, users will still have to come to terms with those displays and keyboards, and most annoying of all, the addressing of E-Mail users. But that's where X.500 comes in. If you know enough about a person so phone them, or address a postal letter to them, you have the actual E-Mail addressing information automatically retrieved by the E-Mail system. Sound like a dream? Today it is. In the next 2 to 3 years? Much less so! The progression of E-Mail is coming, slowly, and in stages. To abandon E-Mail for FAX is ridiculous, just as abandoning FAX for E-Mail is ridiculous (and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Atkins atkins@hpindqa.HP.COM (408) 447-2057 Hewlett Packard (43LS) 19420 Homestead Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014