enabling Exchange through detailed anaysis of Notes/Domino and DECS ..
 
From: Eric Lockard (Exchange)
Friday, December 18, 1996 10:42 PM
To: Bill Gates
Cc: Kurt DelBene (Exchange); Jeff Teper Exchange); Gordon Mangoine Exchange); Mike Tuchen Exchange); Nat Bellou (Exchange); Darren Shakib (Exchange); Chris Larson (Exchange); Alex Hopmann (Exchange); Malcolm Paerson; Eric Rudder; Jim Allchin (Exchange); Bob Muglia (Exchange); David Vaskevitch (Exchange); Paul Flessner; Brian MacDonald; Paul Maritz; Jon DeVann; Russell Stockdale (Exchange); Dave Malcolm (Exchange)
Subject Storage for Office
 
 Summary
 
 With the Platinum store, we are on the verge of achieving an integrated storage and application development environment, clients and server, in 1999, which would allow us to compete efectivly with Notes and Domino as well as bring tremendous advantages to Office and Windows users and developers. I also believe we could totally screw this up, lose momentum and lose years if we make the wrong decision at this crossroads.
 
 Outlook, PKM, NetDocs, VSS and other groups have done the analysis - Platinum is fastest, safest, best way to get the right storage for Office and beat Notes which insures the value proposition of Office/Windows over thin clients. We can make this happen in 1999. The Storage+ alternative has merits but it has the same risks our previous strategic storage efforts faced. Lets bet on the thing that we know has been optimized for the scenarios we must address and do a great job of development consistency and SQL integration.
 
 Focusing on the right requirements
 
 As a company, we need to make sure we focus on competing with Notes/Domino. Too often in the storage debate, we get off track on what are the most important and immediate goals for storage unification. Running SAP on the same storage system as that used by Office or provided natively in Windows, while certainly important long-term, is not helping and potentially hindering competing with Lotus and providing server-transparent, caching local storage system which seamlessly unifies the file system, Outlook storage, Office documents, Access, Outlook Express and IE's cache. (IF integration with SAP is the high order bit, we should be running hard at enabling Lotus's DECS style integration by creating Exchange-BAPI, Peoplesoft and Beans replicators. This provides the end user integration without requiring wholesale conversion of the underlying store.
 
 I would argue that reducing operlapping efforts within the company is not the prime motivator for storage unification. Competing with Notes, making Office and Windows the premier application platform, providing a unified storage paradigm for the Windows user for all their data, these are what we should stay focused on.
 
 Notes/Domino R5 is very scary. We all saw the demo. Exchange has worked with teams around the company to put together a very detailed analysis of the R5 betas and the hints they've exposed on their future direction. We now have a fairly good understanding of what they are doing and where they're going. Lotus's goal is nothing less than to become the new OS - to provide the environment applications are built upon and users live in without ever needing to leave. They threaten not only the Exchange/Outlook business but all of Office and eventually, Windows. Bobmu points this out very eloquently in this recent mail:
 
 ...

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/px03000.pdf
 
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court documents in the case of Comes v Microsoft.
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From the MICROS'1 dictionary of technical terms
 
'enabling', verb ..
 
Clone something and copy it into your own apps