I wonder if they will be interested in releasing the source code for IMail Server on the Open Source Market. I'm sure that I speak for most of the users on this list in saying that I'm ready to go back to the days of the "20 minute e-mail solution".
Chris -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 3:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Collaboration is now available :( >I will wager that the entire management team and > marketing department are reading every one of these > posts in horror. I'm sure they are reading them also, but I doubt it is in horror. That would assume that Ipswitch didn't expect the kind of fallout that's now on the list. I can imagine that they knew very well what would happen, but wanted to take their business in a different direction. If that direction was to go after larger enterprise customers, they may have felt they needed to shed a few low-profitability customers in the process. They may feel that they work too hard for the small support agreement renewals and would prefer to work with fewer customers that generate much more income. I don't think there are many other ways to read it, and I don't think it was accidental. I seriously doubt we will see a reversal. One recent event really caused me to wonder about Ipswitch's commitment to smaller customers. I was told to call Ipswitch support regarding a ticket that I had submitted by email. I did so -- at 4:45 pm -- and the support person indignantly asked why I would call so close to quitting time. An attitude like that is often a reflection of the culture rather than a singular event. Of course, I could just have caught them on an off day, but it took me by surprise. The risk in Ipswitch's strategy is, as many have pointed out, is that they are now going to go head-to-head with products that are much more sophisticated, capable, and mature. Consider the IMail webmail "address book" as an example -- would you want to try to sell an address book that contains two fields to an enterprise client? I wouldn't. It will be interesting to see if they can succeed. I wish them the best of luck, but I won't be along for the ride. There are exciting new developments over at Declude -- from people I do trust. And if any of you are .NET developers, have a look at SmarterMail, which comes with 34 SOAP modules to use for integrating with your applications. It also includes built-in support for an alternate SMTP port, which I can really use. I would love to hear evals from some of the more experienced admins on this product. Regards, Bill To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
