1.1 --- a/thesis/tex/2-MarketAnalysis.tex	Sat Feb 07 23:48:48 2009 +0100
     1.2 +++ b/thesis/tex/2-MarketAnalysis.tex	Sun Feb 08 22:51:42 2009 +0100
     1.3 @@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
     1.4  \section{Electronic communication technologies}
     1.5  
     1.6  Electronic communication is ``communication by computer'', according to the \name{WordNet} database of the \name{Princeton University} \citeweb{wordnet}. Mobile phones and fax machines should be seen as computers here, too. The \name{Science Glossary} of the \name{Pennsylvania Department of Education} \citeweb{science-glossary-pa} describes electronic communication as ``System for the transmission of information using electronic technology (e.g., digital cameras, cellular telephones, Internet, television, fiber optics).''
     1.7 +\index{fax}
     1.8  \index{electronic communication}
     1.9  
    1.10  Electronic communication needs no transport of tangible things, only electrons, photons, or radio waves need to be transmitted. Thus electronic communication is fast in general. With costs mainly for infrastructure and very low costs for data transmission is electronic communication also cheap communication. Primary the Internet is used as underlying transport infrastructure. Thus electronic communication is available nearly everywhere around the world. These properties---fast, cheap, available---make electronic communication well suited for long distance communication.
    1.11 @@ -20,7 +21,7 @@
    1.12  \subsection{Classification}
    1.13  
    1.14  Electronic communication technologies can be divided in synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication is direct dialog with little delay. Telephone conversation is an example. Asynchronous communication consists of independent messages. Dialogs are possible as well, but not in the same direct fashion. These two groups can also be split by the time which is needed for data delivery. Synchronous communication requires nearly real-time delivery, whereas for asynchronous communication message delivery times of several seconds or minutes are sufficient.
    1.15 -\index{electronic communication!classification of}
    1.16 +\index{electronic communication!classification}
    1.17  
    1.18  Another possible separation is to distinguish recorded and written information. Recorded information, like audio or video data, is accessible only in a linear way by spooling and replay. Written information, on the other hand, can be accessed in arbitrary sequence, detail, and speed.
    1.19  
    1.20 @@ -34,7 +35,6 @@
    1.21  	\end{center}
    1.22  	\caption{Classification of electronic communication technologies}
    1.23  	\label{fig:comm-classification}
    1.24 -	\index{figure!Classification of electronic communication technologies}
    1.25  \end{figure}
    1.26  
    1.27  One might be surprised to find Instant \emph{Messaging} not in the group of \emph{message} communication. Instant Messaging could be put in both groups because it allows asynchronous communication additional to being a chat system. The reasons why it is classified as dialog communication are its primary use for dialog communication and the very fast---instant---delivery time.
    1.28 @@ -58,19 +58,17 @@
    1.29  	\end{center}
    1.30  	\caption{Life cycle of electronic communication technologies}
    1.31  	\label{fig:comm-lifecycle}
    1.32 -	\index{figure!Life cycle of electronic communication technologies}
    1.33  \end{figure}
    1.34  
    1.35  Video messages and voice mail are technologies in the introduction phase. Voice over \NAME{IP} is heavily growing these days. Instant Messaging has reached maturation and is still growing. Email is an example for a technology in the saturation phase. Telefax, for instance, is a declining technology.
    1.36 +\index{fax}
    1.37  
    1.38  Email ranges in the saturation phase which is defined by a saturated market. No more products are needed: there is no more growth. This means, email is a technology which is used by everyone who want to use it. It is a standard technology. The current form of email in the current market is on the top of its life cycle. The future is decline, sooner or later.
    1.39  
    1.40  But life cycles positions change as the subject or the market changes. An examples is the \name{Flash} animation software \citeweb{flash:homepage}. The product's change from a drawing and animation system to a technology for website creation, advertising, and movie distribution, and the thus changing target market, made it slip back on the life cycle. If the email system would evolve to become the basis for Unified Messaging (see section~\ref{sec:unified-messaging}), a similar slip back would be the consequence.
    1.41 -\index{flash}
    1.42  \index{um}
    1.43  
    1.44  The \NAME{DVD} standards \NAME{DVD+} and \NAME{DVD$-$} are an example for a changing market. With the upcoming next generation formats \name{Blu-ray Disc} \citeweb{wikipedia:bluray} and \NAME{HD-DVD} \citeweb{wikipedia:hddvd}, a much sooner decline of \NAME{DVD+} and \NAME{DVD$-$} started, even before they reached their last improvement steps in storage size. Such can happen to email too, if Unified Messaging is a revolution to the email system instead of an evolution.
    1.45 -\index{dvd}
    1.46  \index{um}
    1.47  
    1.48  
    1.49 @@ -87,7 +85,7 @@
    1.50  \index{um}
    1.51  
    1.52  Today email still is the major asynchronous communication technology and it probably will be it for the next years. Unified Messaging needs similar transfer facilities as email, thus it seems to be rather an evolution to the current technology than a revolution. Hence \MTA{}s will still be of importance in future, though maybe in a modified form.
    1.53 -\index{mta!future importance of}
    1.54 +\index{mta}
    1.55  
    1.56  
    1.57  \subsubsection*{Integration}
    1.58 @@ -132,6 +130,7 @@
    1.59  Unified messaging is a nice idea, but a tough sell: The reason you bought a cell phone, a pager, and a fax/modem is because each does its job well. No one wants to download voice mail as a series of RealAudio messages or sit through a voice mail bot spelling out email, complete with `semicolon dash end-parenthesis' for ;-).
    1.60  \hfill\cite{wired:hype}
    1.61  \end{quote}
    1.62 +\index{fax}
    1.63  
    1.64  
    1.65  
    1.66 @@ -166,7 +165,7 @@
    1.67  \end{quote}
    1.68  
    1.69  The amount of spam is huge. Panda Security and Commtouch write in their \name{Email Threats Trend Report} for the second Quarter of 2008: ``Spam levels throughout the second quarter averaged 77\,\%, ranging from a low of 64\,\% to a peak of 94\,\% of all email [...]'' \cite[page 4]{panda:email-threats}. The report sees the main source of spam in bot nets consisting of zombie computers: ``Spam and malware levels remain high for yet another quarter, powered by the brawny yet agile networks of zombie \NAME{IP}s.'' \cite[page 1]{panda:email-threats}. This is supported by IronPort Systems: ``More than 80 percent of spam now comes from a `zombie'---an infected \NAME{PC}, typically in a consumer broadband network, that has been hijacked by spammers.'' \cite{ironport:zombie-computers}. Positive for \MTA{}s is that they are not the main source for spam, but it is only a small delight. Spam is a general weakness of the email system because it is not stoppable.
    1.70 -\index{spam!sources of}
    1.71 +\index{spam!sources}
    1.72  
    1.73  
    1.74  
    1.75 @@ -175,8 +174,9 @@
    1.76  \subsubsection*{Opportunities}
    1.77  
    1.78  Opportunities of the market are large data transfers, originating in multimedia content, which becomes popular. If email is used as basis for Unified Messaging, lots of voice and video mail will be transferred. Email is weak related to this kind of data: The data needs to be encoded to \NAME{ASCII} which stresses mail servers a lot. Additionally a lot of traffic is generated by the \name{store-and-forward} transfer, which \SMTP\ uses.
    1.79 +\index{ascii}
    1.80  \index{um}
    1.81 -\index{store-and-forward}
    1.82 +\index{smtp!store-and-forward}
    1.83  
    1.84  The use of different hardware to access mail is another opportunity of the market. But as more hardware gets involved, the networks become more complex. Thus the need for more software and infrastructure to transfer mail within the growing network might be a weakness of the email system.
    1.85  
    1.86 @@ -186,6 +186,7 @@
    1.87  The increasing integration of communication channels is an opportunity for the market. But deciding whether it is a weakness or strength of email is difficult. Due to the impossibility to integrate synchronous stream data and large binary data, it is a weakness. But it is also a strength, because arbitrary asynchronous communication data already can be integrated. On the other hand, the integration might be a threat too, because integration often leads to complexity of software. Complex software is more error prone and thus less reliable. This, however, could again be a strength of electronic mail because its modular design decreases complexity.
    1.88  
    1.89  Figure~\ref{fig:email-swot} displays the \NAME{SWOT} analysis in a handy overview. It is obvious to see, that the opportunities outweigh. This is an indicator for a still increasing market. %fixme: ref
    1.90 +\index{swot analysis}
    1.91  
    1.92  \begin{figure}
    1.93  	\begin{center}
    1.94 @@ -193,7 +194,6 @@
    1.95  	\end{center}
    1.96  	\caption{\NAME{SWOT} analysis for email}
    1.97  	\label{fig:email-swot}
    1.98 -	\index{figure:\NAME{SWOT} analysis for email}
    1.99  \end{figure}
   1.100  
   1.101  
   1.102 @@ -234,8 +234,8 @@
   1.103  \index{dial-up}
   1.104  \index{isp}
   1.105  
   1.106 -Nowadays, dial-up Internet access became rare; the majority of the users has broadband Internet access. As a flat rate is payed for it, the time being online does not affect costs anymore, even traffic is unlimited. Today it is possible to have an own mail server running at home. The remaining technical problem is the changing \NAME{IP} addresses one gets assigned every 24 hours\footnote{This, at least, is the situation in Germany.}. But this is solvable with one of the dynamic \NAME{DNS} services; they provide the mapping of a fixed domain name to the changing \NAME{IP} addresses.
   1.107 -\index{changing ip addresses}
   1.108 +Nowadays, dial-up Internet access became rare; the majority of the users has broadband Internet access. As a flat rate is payed for it, the time being online does not affect costs anymore, even traffic is unlimited. Today it is possible to have an own mail server running at home. The remaining technical problem is the changing \NAME{IP} addresses one gets assigned every 24 hours\footnote{At least this is the situation in Germany.}. But this is solvable with one of the dynamic \NAME{DNS} services; they provide the mapping of a fixed domain name to the changing \NAME{IP} addresses.
   1.109 +\index{dynamic dns}
   1.110  
   1.111  Home servers become popular for central data storage and multimedia services, these days. Being assembled of energy efficient hardware, power consumption is no big problem anymore. These home servers will replace video recorders and \NAME{CD} music collections in the near future. It is also realistic that they will manage heating systems and intercoms, too. Given the future leads to this direction, it will be a logical step to have email and other communication provided by the own home server as well.
   1.112  \index{home server}
   1.113 @@ -247,10 +247,12 @@
   1.114  \index{push email}
   1.115  
   1.116  The retrieval of email is a field that is also about to change these days. The old way is to fetch email by polling the server that holds the personal mailbox. This polling is normally done in regular intervals, often once every five to thirty minutes. The mail transfer from the mailbox to the \MUA\ is initiated from the user side. The disadvantage herewith is the delay between the arrival of mail on the server and the time when the user finally has the message on his screen.
   1.117 +\index{mua}
   1.118  
   1.119  To remove this disadvantage, \name{push email} \citeweb{pushemail.co.uk} was invented. Here the server is not polled every few minutes about new mail, but the server pushes new mail directly to the client on arrival. The transfer is initiated by the server. This concept became popular with smart phones; they were able to do emailing but the traffic caused by polling the server was expensive.
   1.120  
   1.121  The concept works well with mobile phones where the provider knows about the client, but it does not seem to be a choice for computers, since the provider needs to have some kind of login to push data to the user's computer. Push email, however, could swap over to computers when using a home server and no external provider. A possible scenario is a home server which receives mail from the Internet and pushing it to own workstations and smart phones. The configuration could be done by the user by using some simple interface, like one configures his telephone system to have different telephone numbers ringing on specified phones.
   1.122 +\index{configuration}
   1.123  
   1.124  Another problem is when multiple clients share one mailbox. This is only solvable by working directly in the server's mailbox, which causes lots of traffic, or by storing at least information about read messages and the like there.
   1.125  
   1.126 @@ -262,6 +264,7 @@
   1.127  
   1.128  As main change, the sender has the responsibility for mail storage; only a notification about a mail message gets sent to the recipient. The recipient can then fetch the message then from the sender's server. This is in contrast to the \SMTP\ mail architecture where mail and the responsibility for it is transferred from the sender to the receiver. (See page~\pageref{smtp-intro} for the \name{store-and-forward} principle.)
   1.129  \index{smtp!store-and-forward}
   1.130 +\index{smtp!responsibility}
   1.131  
   1.132  \MTA{}s are still important in this new email architecture, but in a slightly different way. They do not transfer mail itself anymore, but they transport the notifications about new mail to the destinations. This is a quite similar job as in the \NAME{SMTP} model. The real transfer of the mail, however, can be done in an arbitrary way, for example via \NAME{FTP} or \NAME{SCP}.
   1.133  
   1.134 @@ -269,6 +272,7 @@
   1.135  \index{Guarded Email}
   1.136  
   1.137  \name{Hashcash} by \person{Adam Back}---a third concept---tries to limit spam and denial of service attacks \cite{back02}. It requests payment for email. The costs are computing time for the generation of hash values. Thus sending spam becomes expensive. Further information about \name{Hashcash} can be found on \citeweb{hashcash:homepage}.
   1.138 +\index{denial of service attack}
   1.139  \index{Hashcash}
   1.140  
   1.141  New concepts, like the ones presented here, are invented to remove problems of the email technology. \name{Internet Mail 2000}, for instance, removes the spam problem and the problem of large message transfers.
   1.142 @@ -283,10 +287,12 @@
   1.143  
   1.144  \paragraph{Easy configuration}
   1.145  Provider independence through running an own mail server at home asks for easy configuration of the \MTA. Providers have specialists to configure the systems, but ordinary people do not. Solutions are either having some home service system for computer configuration established with specialists coming to ones home to set up the systems; like it is already common for problems with the power and water supply systems. Or configuration needs to be easy and fool-proof, so it can be done by the owner himself. The latter solution depends on standardized parts that fit together seamlessly. The technology must not be a problem itself. Only settings that are custom to the users environment should be left open for him to set. This of course needs to be doable using a simple configuration interface like a web interface. Non-technical educated users should be able to configure the system.
   1.146 -\index{easy configuration}
   1.147 +\index{configuration}
   1.148  
   1.149  Complex configuration itself is not a problem if simplification wrappers provide an easy interface. The approach of wrappers to make it look easier to the outside is a good concept in general. It still lets the specialist do complex and detailed configuration while also a simple configuration interface to novices is offered. \sendmail\ took this approach with the \name{m4} macros \cite{sendmail:config}. Further more is this approach well suited to provide various wrappers with different user interfaces (e.g.\ graphical programs, websites, command line programs; all of them either in a questionnaire style or interactive).
   1.150 -\index{sendmail!m4 macros}
   1.151 +\index{sendmail}
   1.152 +\index{wrapper}
   1.153 +\index{m4 macros}
   1.154  
   1.155  \paragraph{Performance}
   1.156  When \MTA{}s become popular on home servers and maybe even on workstations and smart phones, then performance will be less important. Providers need \MTA{}s that process large amounts of mail in short time. There is no need for home servers and workstations to handle that much mail; they need to process far less email messages per time unit. Thus performance will probably not be a main requirement for an \MTA\ in future, given they mainly run on private machines.
   1.157 @@ -294,6 +300,7 @@
   1.158  
   1.159  \paragraph{Flexibility}
   1.160  New mailing concepts and architectures like push email or \name{Internet Mail 2000} will, if they succeed, require \MTA{}s to adopt the new technology. \MTA{}s that are not able to change are going to be sorted out by evolution. Thus it is important \emph{not} to focus too much on one use case, but to stay flexible. \person{Allman} saw the flexibility of \sendmail\ one reason for its huge success (see section~\ref{sec:sendmail}).
   1.161 +\index{sendmail}
   1.162  \index{flexibility}
   1.163  
   1.164  \paragraph{Security}
   1.165 @@ -334,6 +341,7 @@
   1.166  
   1.167  \paragraph{\NAME{SWOT} analysis}
   1.168  Not only the market influences email's future safety, but also must the email technology itself evolve to satisfy upcoming needs. Actions to take were discovered by using the \NAME{SWOT} analysis. These are: Prepare against spam. Search solutions for large data transfers and increasing growth and ramification of networks. Exploit standardization, modularity, and extendability.
   1.169 +\index{swot analysis}
   1.170  
   1.171  \paragraph{Trends}
   1.172  Also needed is awareness for new trends like: Provider independence, new delivery concepts, and completely new emailing concepts that introduce new protocols. Easy configuration, as well as the somehow opposed flexibility, will be important, but not performance. Security will be essential.
   1.173 @@ -342,6 +350,7 @@
   1.174  What kinds of \MTA{}s will be needed in future? Probably ones running on home servers and workstations. This is what \masqmail\ was designed for. The dial-up Internet connections, which are central to \masqmail's design, become rare, but mobile clients that move between different networks do need similar concepts, too. This makes \masqmail\ still be a good \MTA\ for such usage. Additionally, \masqmail\ is small and it is much easier to configure for setups that are common to workstations and home servers, than other \MTA{}s.
   1.175  
   1.176  \MTA{}s might become more commodity software, like web servers already are today, with the purpose to be included in many systems with only minimal configuration.
   1.177 +\index{configuration}
   1.178  
   1.179  
   1.180  \masqmail\ is a valuable program for various situations. Some setups became rare, but others are expected to become popular in the next years. It is expected that \masqmail's niche will rather grow than shrink.