IBM is using electronic mail technology developed by its Lotus Development Corp Soft-Switch division, packaged up with its AIX RS/6000 hardware, to provide internet service providers with an e-mail system scaleable to millions of users. IBM plans to launch the package as the IBM Scalable E-Mail Server in the third quarter of this year, as part of a general sales push from IBM’s Global Telecommunications and Media Industries business unit targeting internet service providers. The package will come in configurations supporting 100,000, 500,000 or 1million users, for example, and include built-in redundancy and disaster recovery features. It supports internet email standards such as SMTP, ESMTP, POP3 and IMAP4, along with mail exchange via X.400 and legacy mail systems. There will also be features to enable service providers to provide out-sourcing services for corporate messaging, and for integration with X.500 directory services. Soft-Switch, of course, in the days before it was acquired by Lotus in June 1994, was the company that helped IBM out of a hole when it got hopelessly bogged down developing the communications for its now defunct Officevision software suite. IBM itself runs one of the largest internet service providers in the world, IBM Global Services, and says it will be using the system itself. Other related products for service providers, including management and security offerings, also aimed at supporting large numbers of users, are promised for the future, along with community-based services based on Lotus Domino, and storefront hosting using IBM’s own Net.Commerce software.
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