After I got this email on the list I sent an email to sendmail.org
asking for some supporting material to their website's claim of
sendmail powering "the vast majority" of email servers. They replied
with the mail that I'm including below as their response.
Seems to me that sendmail.org has decided to redefine the word
"majority" as being 40% instead of more than half like Webster's
unabridged dictionary. (Kind of reminds you of a big computer
company redefining standards eh? But I won't mention microsoft with
that thought.) By the survey they reference that sendmail runs on
41% of mail servers, but they still call that a majority.
Then of course they include a bunch of company propaganda and
advertising stuff.
I've CC:'d this to the sendmail employee that replied so he knows
that I've forwarded his reply to the qmail list and maybe he can
explain to all of us the difference between 41% and "vast majority".
On 13 Jan 2001 22:16:34 -0000, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
>I've set up a web page to combat Sendmail Inc.'s false advertising on
>this topic: http://cr.yp.to/surveys/sendmail.html
>
>Sendmail dropped below 50% of the Internet's SMTP servers---including
>idle workstations---last year; qmail has climbed past 10%. I suspect
>that qmail now handles more Internet mail deliveries than Sendmail does,
>although I don't know a good way to measure this.
Here's what I sent to sendmail.org:
> Your website claims that sendmail powers the "vast majority" of
> internet SMTP servers. I'm curious how you determined that and if
> you have the results of such a survey available.
And here's the reply I got from them:
Sirana Survey Puts Sendmail Way Out in Front
Checking the brand name of 513,797 Internet mail servers, company
finds 41
percent using sendmail, 15.7 percent using Ipswitch IMail, and 9.4
percent
using Microsoft Exchange Server as their external Internet mail
server.
Jan. 25, 2000
Sirana Software has released what it calls the most extensive survey
of
Internet mail servers ever compiled. In the dot-com domain, 38
percent of
the mail servers support sendmail, while 20 percent support Ipswitch
Imail
Server. Microsoft Exchange Server had around an 11 percent share, and
no
other product was in the double digits.
The shareware package sendmail, predominantly the current version
8.9.3,
had more than half the mail servers found in the (net) domain, with
Ipswitch second at 14 percent and Microsoft out of the money with 5
percent. Sendmail had 42 percent of the (org) domain, 43 percent of
the
Canada (ca) domain, 45 percent of the Germany (de) domain, and 37
percent
of the Australia (au) domain. Microsoft and Ipswitch trailed by wide
margins in each case.
Over in the U.S. military's (mil) domain, the story was quite the
opposite. Exchange had a 32 percent share, and sendmail had only 14
percent. However, fully 23 percent came up in the Sirana survey as
unknown. Novell, Lotus, Netscape, and Software.com were all at one
percent
or below.
Entire Internet
Across the entire Internet, sendmail had a 41 percent share. Ipswitch
had
16 percent and Exchange had 9 percent. Nothing else was higher than 4
percent. This survey of course counts mail servers as its unit -- not
email users -- but it ranks the major players in a rather different
order
than one might expect.
Vendor Hosts Percent
Sendmail 210,902 41.0%
Ipswitch 80,721 15.7%
Microsoft 48,362 9.4%
Qmail 19,802 3.9%
Software.com 18,058 3.5%
Gordano Ltd 17,228 3.4%
Unknown 16,851 3.3%
Lotus 6,924 1.3%
Eudora 6,832 1.3%
Novell 6,802 1.3%
NetWin 6,263 1.2%
Netscape 6,216 1.2%
Checkpoint Software Technologies 5,399 1.1%
Seattle Lab 4,973 1.0%
Exim.org 4,957 1.0%
Others 53,507 10%
Total: 513,797 100%
Source: Sirana Software
http://www.sirana.com/smtp/results.asp
Annual Year-End Survey
It's once again time for Messaging Today to gather reports and
statistics
from the messaging industry, working towards the publication of a
Dec. 31,
1999 installed base report by month's end. That process already has
started. Recently, Messaging Today checked in with Rockliffe Inc., as
it
prepares to launch MailSite 4 next month. The company is making a
major
bet that ISPs and ASPs can be coaxed away from sendmail to a
commercial
platform, and from Unix to Windows 2000. It's not just MailSite
that's
used as bait, it's also all the other applications and tools that
work
with the Windows NT family that the company hopes will attract
service
providers.
New Version Next Month
MailSite(3) is in use at some 2,000 customer sites, with a total of
around
2.5 million users, according to company president John Davies. He
said the
launch of this newest version is scheduled for mid-February, to
coincide
with the Feb. 17 launch of Windows 2000 and the Feb. 15-17 ISPCON
Europe
2000 show in London. He said the major enhancements over version 3,
released last march, are in the areas of Webmail and scalability.
"We've been able to achieve better scalability through integration
with
SQL server databases," Davies said, "and also by adding in some code
to
support clustering. We designed it so you can start with two nodes,
and
you should be able to take it up to four, eight, or ten machines. You
can
host a single domain over multiple MailSite machines."
The user directory can be run on one machine, using a centralized SQL
Server 7 database. The message store can run on another machine,
optimized
for high volumes of file reads and writes. Then multiple machines can
be
run as MailSite application nodes. This architecture, Davies said,
has
already scaled up to half a million users, and can probably go to a
million users. The architecture gets around some of the high-volume
filing
problems of the Windows NT filing system by using a Network Appliance
Inc.
file server for the message store function. In that way, he said he
can
get the reliability and scalability of Unix at NT prices.
Looking for Non-Unix ISPs
"We're targeting high-end service providers. We're competing with
Unix
solutions, and with other NT solutions. And we think we have some
advantages on both," Davies said. Large and established ISPs still
prefer
Unix, but if they're starting small and want to scale along with
traffic,
or if they want Webmail along with POP3 client access, Davies said
they
might find MailSite attractive. If they plan on getting to a million
users
in no time, they'll probably use a Unix solution. But only a handful
are
that ambitious about their own growth, and only a few dozen have ever
gotten that big.
Application Service Providers (ASPs), however, seem more receptive to
Windows NT, he said, because they usually set up their clients one
per
machine, and NT has a lower cost for that type of configuration.
Also, he
said the ASPs find it easier to pick from the array of applications
available for NT, and then to integrate them into the server for a
customer.
What Davies said he hopes also will attract ASPs and ISPs is the
simplicity of the new MailSite Express Webmail interface, which is
both
easy to customize and feature-rich, given its avoidance of Java,
JavaScript, and ActiveX controls. The Webmail interface looks and
feels
like Hotmail, but it also supports folders, address books,
forwarding,
changing passwords, and updating your own directory entry. It uses
the
IMAP protocol to talk to MailSite, so all messages remain stored on
the
server. That way, a user can switch from Webmail to an Outlook client
without missing any messages. If they read them on a borrowed Webmail
connection and don't delete them, they can read them again using
Outlook,
saving a copy locally.
Webmail-to-Outlook Contact Synch
The MailSite Express online address book can import and export
contacts
from an Outlook client, so users can travel with their name and
number
lists stored in their Webmail interface, reachable through any Web
browser. Davies said Rockliffe wrote an Outlook service provider that
adds
a new button to the Outlook toolbar. When the button is pressed, the
utility displays lists of the MailSite Express and Outlook contacts.
Users
can synchronize them in either direction. Customizing the interface
to
suit an ISP's look and feel is a process of editing three files,
Davies
said. Pricing will be around $1 per user.
2000 Messaging Online, Inc.
Stephen Berg
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