Overview

Experienced Exchange administrators are all too aware that the speed of client deployment limits how quickly they can deploy Exchange within an enterprise. Outlook is a highly functional client, but deploying Outlook takes a lot of work, especially if you want to tailor the options to suit your company s requirements. To some degree, the utilities in Microsoft s Office Resource Kit, including the Outlook Custom Installation Wizard, and tools from company like ProfileMaker (www.autoprof.com) help to speed deployment. However, there are often situations where you simply do not need to provide Outlook to user communities that, for one reason or another, only need relatively simple features.

The major advantage of a Web-based client is that it does not need an administrator to download code or otherwise configure a user PC. Simply point the browser to the correct URL to launch the application, and the browser downloads whatever code is necessary. Of course, there is nothing new in this strategy, because it has existed under a different name (mainframe computing) almost since the dawn of computing. Those who decried mainframe and minicomputer email systems with the term green screen email, at the advent of PC-driven client/server email applications such as Exchange and Lotus Notes, now seem to be quick to embrace the concept of a Web client, possibly because they have been burned by the effort and expense required to deploy, maintain, and update PC clients.

With Web clients, users can move from PC to PC and access their email without...