Microsoft To Pitch XSOs To Bridge Exchange Development Gap, Ease Integration

Microsoft

A flock of XSOs, or Exchange Server Objects, either downloadable or shipping with the next version of Exchange Server, would facilitate application development and the integration of outside applications with Exchange-based functionality, these sources said. The next Exchange Server, code-named Titanium, is due next year.

"There might be a contact XSO or a deployment XSO, for example, that would wrap together previous work including HTTP webDAV [Web Distributed Authoring Version calls into components," said one source briefed on the plans. The news will be announced later this week at Microsoft's MEC 2002 conference in Anaheim, Calif.

Sources close to the company said the effort constitutes Microsoft's attempt to bridge the gap between what Exchange Server was originally meant to be, a full development environment for collaborative applications, and what it has become, a messaging server.

Company insiders characterized the effort differently, calling it a "further step towards easing integration between Exchange and line-of-business applications by enabling contextual collaboration."

The goal is tighter integration with other applications, with other servers on the Microsoft bench and even with applications built atop non-Microsoft servers, these insiders said.

Business partners, however, said Microsoft is still dealing with the shift from the original Exchange Server message, which was it would offer an array of development tools to take on the rich design capabilities available with Lotus Domino/Notes.

That gameplan was pulled within a year of Exchange Server 2000's shipment, with developers told to host applications elsewhere.

That about-face provoked the ire of some large integration partners such as Accenture, who had bought into the Exchange-as-development-platform worldview, sources said. "These guys felt there was a bait and switch," one source said.

"When Exchange 2000 shipped, developers were encouraged to use it as an application host. Then that message was yanked, and people were told about this new Yukon data store and to put their applications elsewhere."

As part of this shift, Microsoft scaled back work on the local Exchange data store and stopped it on Office Designer, these sources said. In 1999, internal Microsoft documents described Office Designer as a tool that would "compete head on with the Lotus Notes Designer. . . . This, along with Outlook and Platinum, is Microsoft's strategy to unseat Lotus Notes from its dominant position."

The current Exchange Server 2000 utilizes messaging applications built with Collaboration Data Objects or CDOs. XSOs promise to build on that foundation but are also able to locate features and capabilities in other applications and tap into them, the sources said.

Microsoft would not comment for this story.

Analysts agreed that Microsoft has to clear up its collaboration worldview. "Microsoft's collaboration strategy is very mixed up...Lotus has offered a consistent development environent for years and has a really good story for enterprise customers," said Michael Sampson, analyst for San Francisco-based Ferris Networks.

The messaging and collaboration wars are being hotly contested by Microsoft and IBM's Lotus Software group. With Lotus now shipping Domino and Notes 6 and Titanium, expected to ship next year, a major theme is server consolidation and reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

"The Domino 6/Titanium messages are remarkably similar because in this economic environment IT managers have to build a business case to justify upgrades," said Meta Group Senior Vice President Matt Cain.