What's Happening with Comms

It's never as good as you want it to be, but it's never quite as bad as you think either ! Not sure who said that but I have found it to be really true.

This applies really well to the Comms product suite. Part of my job at Sun is working with Comms team to re-invest in the product
and make sure that it is a strong Microsoft Exchange alternative.

I have seen many blog entries and emails from customers and employees (including our CEO) which express frustration with bug fixing, feature addition, etc.

I hear you and we are going to do something about it !

Priorities going forward

  1. Bring "Wow" back into the Web Client. Actively under construction is aWeb 2.0 client for mail, calendar, IM and contacts that will raise more than a few eyebrows.
  2. Complete rebuild of the install environment (so SIMPLE my mom could install it).
  3. Deliver a calendar server based on the latest CalDAV standard.
  4. Open Source Comms components
  5. Increase search and management  capability of the message store
  6. Enable large message store capability
  7. Bring carrier grade, push e-mail to the market.  Based on IETF/Lemonade standards.
  8. Granular and light-weight web services to all Comms backend data.
  9. Deliver SyncML support
  10. Improve and expand Outlook Connector
  11. Offer support for better /cheaper storage & mail-store integration.
  12. A connection back to Sun for to better support users
  13. Add a blogging engine to the Comms Suite


Just a partial list of what we are planning, and over the coming months we will be sharing more and more info with you as we get things released. So how are we going to deliver on this?  By making significant new  investment in sustaining and QA.  This will allow us to have developers spend most of their time doing what they are best at - innovating and developing cool new products.  Of course this won't all happen at once, but we have a strong server technology base to build on that makes this possible.

To learn more about Sun's Java Communications Suite and how it can help your business, you can  take a look at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/comms/overview/index.jsp

Send your comments and feedback, we believe in our products and we know that Comms on Solaris can be a competitive advantage for you in your business.

 Coming soon.....

A screen shot of our next generation web client 


Posted on: Apr 19, 2007

Posted by: 89024

Category: Sun

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Comments:

Great news! Here are couple more things to consider: 1. Single-Instance storage or message and attachment deduplication. Especially attachment deduplication, that could be done on storage level by using Data Domain or EMC Centera CAS. To achieve that attachments should be stored on a separate files from .msg. 2. Custom Web interface themes.

Posted by Saul on April 19, 2007 at 04:03 PM PDT #

Thanks for the news about the future. Here is an interesting article regarding "Do you really need Sun Weblog Publisher?". If you still want to integrate this into Comms, maybe it's a good idea to contact the StarOffice developers; just to prevent to re-invent the wheel. http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/12/1912230

Posted by Marcus Lange on April 26, 2007 at 01:19 AM PDT #

I'm really glad that work to improve all of this is happening. Is there any way to get the cal-amer and cal-sfbay servers inside of Sun updated to the latest? I struggle to use these-- they really don't work well at all. I have a negative impression of this product as a result.

Posted by Sad Sun User on April 26, 2007 at 10:32 AM PDT #

Great news - but too late for many I suspect. We are currently running JES but the endless bugs and problems mean that we are seriously looking at moving to Exchange :-( Having been a Sun fan for 15 years my 3 years running a JES msging and cal install have been frustrating to the extreme. I'm not sure I'll be sad to be jumping ship now tbh. Sun needed the wow factor 3-4 years ago to stop Exchange. The Outlook connector is *still* bugridden and when we finally get a bug accepted it takes *ages* to get it fixed (bug 6520160 as an example!)

Posted by Darren Chapman on April 27, 2007 at 12:06 PM PDT #

I believe that Sun's mail store is one of the best in the business. The problem is that users don't care that it makes my job way easier to use your product. To them it is all about how they use the client software. This looks promising. I just hope we can all upgrade from 2005Q4 to the new version, with a "so simple your mom could do it" upgrade path. I also hope that it won't be 2010Q4 before we see the product.

Posted by Troy Knabe on June 15, 2007 at 03:17 PM PDT #

I looked at the link you provided for the Comms V 5, and when I look at the messaging and calendaring pages they both say you can download and use the systems for free, pay for support. However when I look at the FAQ for calendaring it has a licensing price entry of $50 per employee and no mention of use for free. Which is the correct statement? I want to implement this on my personal mail domain (way over kill I know - but it keeps my familiarity up :-)) but I don't want to run it unlicensed.

I can be reached at firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com

Thank you
Cheers, Liam Greenwood

Posted by Liam Greenwood on September 21, 2007 at 09:46 AM PDT #

In response to Liam's question about licensing: all comms products can be run free of charge. So if you want to run it at home, you can do so and not feel guilty. I suspect the referenced FAQ is simply out of date.

Support does still cost money...

Posted by Jeff Allison on October 16, 2007 at 03:14 PM PDT #

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