"I don't see the desktop connection that you claim, but go ahead and expain it. And when you're finished explaining how they leveraged the desktop to win the email server platform...tell me why they aren't winning the firewall/proxy war."
Outlook is not available for UNIX desktop clients. Even Outlook Web Access isn't full featured on anything other than IE. It's embrace and extend again... the Outlook functionality can only be fully used on Windows.
Firewalls and proxies meanwhile are standards based. If Microsoft tried to do with TCP/IP what they do with app protocols, it just wouldn't work.
That doesn't explain how EXCHANGE become so popular. OWA didn't get really good until recently, but before that EXCHANGE was already #1.
Firewalls and proxies meanwhile are standards based. If Microsoft tried to do with TCP/IP what they do with app protocols, it just wouldn't work.
Last I remember is that Email was standards based too. It looks like M$ just knew how to make it more user friendly. I remember when I was installing my first exchange server (after we tried to use EUDORA and POP3 UNIX servers)...the user base was never happier. But I guess that's evil M$ making them like their products.