Digital Media Buzz > Open Outlook Brightens Microsoft’s Future

Open Outlook Brightens Microsoft’s Future

By John Greaves

In 2001 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called open source “a cancer.” As late as 2007, Ballmer maintained Microsoft’s stance that its intellectual property was not freely available to open source. Fast forward to March 25, 2009, and Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft is quoted as saying Microsoft’s vision now includes having open source software running on top of Windows.

Computer World reported recently that “Microsoft will provide patent- and license-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders opening e-mail, calendar, contacts and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services.” Apparently, the times they are changing. But changing into what?

Microsoft’s announcement that it will open its Outlook format to outside applications has created excitement and speculation in app developers about the future of email. According to Bill Boebel, CTO of Rackspace, a large hosting and cloud computing company out of San Antonio, Texas, “In the short term, there are two immediate impacts we’ll see by developers having deep access into Outlook PST storage format. “Faster development of Outlook plugins such as Xobni, and easier migration of mail data from Outlook to services such as Rackspace Email and Gmail.”

For the user the implications for collaborative work are tremendous. Hal Steger, VP of marketing for third-party app developer Funambol thinks in the next three to five years email will more closely resemble social networking messages instead of traditional email. “We’ll be able to get a 360-degree view of all of our status updates in one place. Going forward it will essentially make for a creation of a new generation email experience for many people. We’ll especially have more flexibility to mesh with social networks, for example,” Steger says.

The most obvious indicators of the new face of email might be Google Wave and Mozilla Raindrop. “Raindrop is a Web service designed to collate, filter and present content from disparate messaging services. It currently comes with support for Twitter, Gmail, IMAP email and Skype. One of the key goals is to use smarter filtering methodology to increase the visibility of important messages and reduce the amount of noise that tends to bog down Internet communication,” says Ryan Paul of Ars Technica.

Raindrop is not a desktop client application although it’s made by the same crew behind Thunderbird. But it is an open source messaging platform. Google Wave on the other hand is a complete reimagining of the email experience. According to blogger Tim O’Reilly, “Effectively, a message (a wave) is a shared communications space with elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking and even wikis.”

Boebel adds that Outlook itself may be in for significant changes beyond granting access to mail, calendar and contact information. “In the longer term, Outlook could become an apps platform where we see all sorts of third-party apps being developed that add value to the core feature set of Outlook, such as what you see at Facebook today.”

Bloggers like Matt Asay of CNET Network agree with Steger’s view that open source will allow a more seamless meshing of our lives. Users will probably be able to seamlessly coordinate their professional and recreational activities and businesses will have even more powerful tools to allow customers into the world of their brand. However Asay said in an April 27 blog, “Microsoft is unlikely to be able to transform email with Outlook and the Exchange Server: it is already too deep into its Inventor’s dilemma investment in the old world of email. Plus, its Outlook/Exchange architecture is too calcified to dramatically shift email’s focus.”

Of course the trend toward open source email attracts hackers, and security becomes a bigger concern for business and government. Situations such as the recent hacking of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s email show the danger inherent in open source email for certain types of communication.

Email clients such as Funambol say they have several strategies for ensuring client information safety. “We rely on different industry standards https instead of http whenever we have connection and Triple DES encryption to make it harder to hack,” Steger says.

Rackspace, which hosts more than 1.5 million paid business mailboxes in an Outlook-compatible webmail solution, relies on SSL encryption and maintains security to DoD standards.

Still the onus of protecting information will likely remain on the user. “Once someone takes a quiz on Facebook for example, the quiz developer now has full access to your profile,” Steger says. “They’re using that as a Trojan horse to gain access to your profile just like phishing.”

This means that keeping your passwords strong and stored in a secure location give a measure of protection but so will keeping the lines of business and pleasure separate as far as social networking is concerned.

All this hoopla doesn’t mean there aren’t still challenges. According to Boebel, “They will have to also redesign Outlook with being an apps platform in mind and create some type of ‘app store’ model for third parties to distribute their apps.”

But Microsoft’s move after years of resistance has changed the game to some extent. According to Boebel, “What Microsoft has done is drastically reduced the time it takes to develop these products because developers no longer have to reverse engineer the Outlook storage format.”