Updated: July 11, 2020 (October 23, 2000)
SidebarClient Options for Exchange ASPs
By Peter Pawlak
Application service providers (ASPs) hosting Exchange 2000 can offer multiple client-side options, each with different strengths, limitations, and prices. Customers can select from five different Microsoft-based client options, or even use third-party Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) or Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) mail clients, such as Eudora. The Microsoft client options are discussed below.
Outlook Web Access (OWA). Exchange’s Web-based interface enables the easiest client choice: a Web browser. This is attractive to ASPs because client-side maintenance becomes trivial. Although OWA works with older versions of Internet Explorer (IE) and also with Netscape Navigator, IE 5 supports DHTML support, allowing capabilities like drag-and-drop, double-clicking to open items, sortable columns, and other types of local processing. Overall, however, OWA lacks some of Outlook 2000s functionality, such as spell checking, Wordmail (Word as the e-mail editor), tasks, new mail notification, and offline support. Logon credentials must be secured through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. Microsoft has greatly improved the performance of OWA from the version in Exchange 5.5, and this solution will suffice for a high percentage of ASP customers. ASPs can extend and enhance all the features of OWA by modifying the Active Server Pages and Collaboration Data Object components.
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