Lotus Development Corp is now shipping its native Internet Simple Mail Transfer Protocol/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions and cc:Mail message transfer agents. A third message transfer agent for X.400-based systems is scheduled for later this month. The Lotus Notes message transfer agents are designed to provide a messaging backbone for Notes, cc:Mail, X.400 and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol networks, as well as the Internet, by extending native protocol and directory support to the Lotus Notes Release 4 server. In more complex networks, they can be configured to perform fault-tolerant routing. The Notes message transfer agents provide multiple options for address translation, to ease compatibility with existing systems and conventions. For example, users can migrate from cc:Mail to Notes, or reside on multiple Simple Mail Transfer Protocol domains at the same time, yet receive mail in the correct mailbox. Similarly, an enterprise can configure the X.400 message transfer agent to support multiple global domains simultaneously. As well as enabling cc:Mail users to take advantage of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and X.400 message transfer agents to send or receive SMTP and X.400 messages, the Lotus Notes cc:Mail message transfer agent provides full directory synchronization between Notes and cc:Mail. The message transfer agent’s directory services enable cc:Mail directories to act as replicas of the Notes directory, and Notes domains can mirror cc:Mail Post Office s. Changes to common fields in either directory are automatically synchronized via cc:Mail’s native Automatic Directory Exchange protocol. The Lotus Notes cc:Mail and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions message transfer agents for OS/2 are free, and available immediately for download from the Lotus Web Site, with additional systems to follow. The X.400 message transfer agent costs $50.
