1.1 --- a/thesis/tex/3-MarketAnalysis.tex	Thu Nov 20 21:15:03 2008 +0100
     1.2 +++ b/thesis/tex/3-MarketAnalysis.tex	Thu Nov 20 22:05:37 2008 +0100
     1.3 @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
     1.4  
     1.5  Electronic communication is communication that is based on electronic data exchange, no physical contact is needed and no physical transport needs to be done for it. Additional, electronic communication is fast in general. With having no other needs besides the electronic infrastructure, electronic communication provides cheap communication. As underlying transport infrastructure, mostly the Internet is used; this makes it available nearly everywhere around the world. These properties---fast, cheap, everywhere---make electronic communication well suited for long distance communication.
     1.6  
     1.7 -%todo: electronic communication vs. digital communication
     1.8 +%todo: clarify: electronic communication vs. digital communication
     1.9  
    1.10  As globalization proceeds and long distance communication becomes more and more important. The future of electronic communication is bright.
    1.11  
    1.12 @@ -64,7 +64,7 @@
    1.13  %             |                  |                  |
    1.14  % ---------------------------------------------------
    1.15  %             |                  |                  |
    1.16 -%             | documents        | streaming        |
    1.17 +%             | files            | streams          |
    1.18  %             |                  |                  |
    1.19  %\end{verbatim}
    1.20  %	\end{center}
    1.21 @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@
    1.22  
    1.23  
    1.24  \subsection{Trends}
    1.25 -The following trends will focus on email and the asynchron communication technology.
    1.26 +Following are the trends for electronic communication. The trends are shown from the view point of \mta{}s. Nevertheless are these trends common for all of the communication technology.
    1.27  
    1.28  \subsubsection*{Consolidation}
    1.29  There is a consolidation of communication technologies with similar transport characteristics, nowadays. Email is the most flexible kind of asynchron communication technology already in major use. Hence email is the best choice for transfering messages of any kind today. But in future it probably will be \name{Unified Messaging}, which tries to group all kinds of asynchron messaging into one communication system. It aims to provide a single transport protocol for all content and a flexible access interface for all kinds of clients. Unified messaging seems to have the potential to be the successor of all asynchron communication technologies, including email.
    1.30 @@ -154,8 +154,6 @@
    1.31  
    1.32  
    1.33  
    1.34 -
    1.35 -
    1.36  \subsubsection*{Communication hardware}
    1.37  Hardware needed for communicating comes from two different roots: On the one side, the telephone, now available as mobile phones. This group centers around recorded data and dialog, but messages are supported by the answering machine and \NAME{SMS}. On the other side, mail and its relatives like email, using computers as main hardware. They center around document messages, support dialog communication in Instant Messaging and Voice over \NAME{IP}.
    1.38  
    1.39 @@ -173,7 +171,16 @@
    1.40  
    1.41  \section{Electronic mail}
    1.42  
    1.43 -After viewing the whole market of electronic communication, a zoom in to the market of electronic mail follows. Email is one of the communication technologies, it is asynchron and transports primary textual information. This thesis is about a \mta, so the market situation for email is important. Interesting questions are: 
    1.44 +After viewing the whole market of electronic communication, a zoom in to the market of electronic mail follows. Email is an asynchron communication technology that transports textual information primary. This thesis is about a \mta, so the market situation for email is important. Interesting questions are: Is email future-safe? How will email change? Will it change at all? Which are the critical parts? These questions matter when deciding on the directions for further development of an \MTA.
    1.45 +
    1.46 +
    1.47 +
    1.48 +\subsection{Is email future-safe?}
    1.49 +It seems as if electronic mail or a similar technology has good chances to survive the next decades. This bases on the assumption that it always will be important to send information messages. These can be notes from other people, or notifications from systems (like a broken or full hard drive in the home server, or the coffee machine ran out of coffee beans). Other communication technologies are not as suitable for this kind of messages, as email, short message service, voice mail, and the like. Telephone talks are more focused on dialog and normally interrupt people. These kind of messages should not interrupt people, unless urgent, and they do not need two-way information exchange. The second argument appies to instant messaging too. If only one message is to be send, one does not need instant messaging. Thus, one type of one-way message sending technology will survive.
    1.50 +
    1.51 +Whether email will be the one surviving, or short message service, or another one, does not matter. Probably it will be \name{unified messaging}, which includes all of the other ones in it, anyway. \MTA{}s are a kind of software needed for all of these messaging methods---programs that transfer and receive messages.
    1.52 +
    1.53 +
    1.54  
    1.55  
    1.56  \subsection{\NAME{SWOT} analysis}
    1.57 @@ -186,7 +193,7 @@
    1.58  
    1.59  The increasing integration of communication channels, is an opportunity for the market. But deciding weather it is a weakness or strength of email is not so easy. It is a weakness because the not possible integration of stream data and the not good integration of large binary data. It is also a strength, because arbitary asynchron communication data already can be integrated. On the other hand, the integration might be a threat too, because it easily leads to complexity of software. Complex software is more error prone and thus less reliable. This could be a strength of electronic mail because of its modular design that decreases complexity, but real integration is harder to do than in monolitic systems.
    1.60  
    1.61 -Figure \ref{fig:email-swot} shows the \NAME{SWOT} analysis in a handy overview. It is easy to see, that the opportunities outweigh. This indicates a still increasing technology. %fixme: ref
    1.62 +Figure \ref{fig:email-swot} displays the \NAME{SWOT} analysis in a handy overview. It is easy to see, that the opportunities outweigh. This indicates a still increasing technology. %fixme: ref
    1.63  
    1.64  \begin{figure}
    1.65  	\begin{center}
    1.66 @@ -217,9 +224,8 @@
    1.67  
    1.68  
    1.69  \subsubsection*{Differences in \freesw}
    1.70 -
    1.71 -
    1.72 -\subsubsection*{Consumers}
    1.73 +%fixme: where to put this comment ... appears to be relevant
    1.74 +<< what consumers choose >>
    1.75  
    1.76  
    1.77  
    1.78 @@ -227,17 +233,15 @@
    1.79  
    1.80  \subsection{Trends for electronic mail}
    1.81  
    1.82 +Trends and possible trend, or just plans to think about, are presented now.
    1.83 +%Emailing in future will not be the same as emailing today. This will mainly affect how email is transfered.
    1.84  
    1.85 -But emailing in future will not be the same as emailing now. This will mainly affect how email is transfered.
    1.86  
    1.87 -
    1.88 -\subsubsection*{Provider oriented emailing}
    1.89 +\subsubsection*{Provider independence}
    1.90  Today's email structure is heavily dependent on email providers. This means, most people have email addresses from some provider. These can be the provider of their online connection (e.g.\ \NAME{AOL}, \name{T\~Online}), freemail provider (e.g.\ \NAME{GMX}, \name{Yahoo}, \name{Hotmail}) or provider that offer enhanced mail services that one needs to pay for. Outgoing mail is send either with the webmail client of the provider or using \name{mail user agent}s sending it to the provider for relay. Incoming mail is read with the webmail client or retrieved from the provider via \NAME{POP3} or \NAME{IMAP} to the local computer to be read in the \name{mail user agent}. This means all mail sending and receiving work is done by the provider.
    1.91  
    1.92  The reason therefor is originated in the time when people used dial-up connections to the internet. A mail server needs to be online to receive email. Sending mail is no problem, but receiving it is hardly possible with an \MTA\ being few time online. Internet service providers had servers running all day long connected to the internet. So they offered email service.
    1.93  
    1.94 -
    1.95 -\subsubsection*{Provider independence}
    1.96  Nowadays, dial-up internet access is rare; the majority has broadband internet access paying a flat rate for it. So being online or not does not affect costs anymore, even traffic is unlimited. Today it is possible to have an own mail server running at home. The last technical problem remaining are the changing \NAME{IP} addresses one gets assigned every 24 hours. But this is easily solvable with one of the dynamic \NAME{DNS} services around; they provide the mapping of a fixed domain name to the changing \NAME{IP} addresses.
    1.97  
    1.98  Home servers become popular in these days, for central data storage and multi media services. Being assembled of energy efficient elements, power consumption is no big problem anymore. These home servers will replace video recorders and 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 is a logical step to have email and other communication will be provided by the (or one of) the own server aswell.
    1.99 @@ -260,21 +264,11 @@
   1.100  As main change it makes the sender have the responsibility of mail storage; only a notification about a mail message gets send to the receiver, who can fetch the message then from the sender's server. This is in contrast to the \NAME{SMTP} mail architecture, where mail and the responsibility for it is transfered from the sender to the receiver.
   1.101  
   1.102  \name{Mail transfer agent}s are still important in this mail architecture, but in a slightly different way. Their job is not transfering mail anymore---this makes the name missleading---they are used to transport the notifications about new mail to the destinations. This is a quite similar job as they do in the \NAME{SMTP} model. The real transfer of the mail can be done in any way, for example via \NAME{FTP} or \NAME{SCP}.
   1.103 -
   1.104  %FIXME: add references for IM2000
   1.105  
   1.106  
   1.107  
   1.108  
   1.109 -\subsection{Is email future-safe?}
   1.110 -It seems as if electronic mail or a similar technology has good chances to survive the next decades. This bases on the assumption that it always will be important to send information messages. These can be notes from other people, or notifications from systems (like a broken or full hard drive in the home server, or the coffee machine ran out of coffee beans). Other communication technologies are not as suitable for this kind of messages, as email, short message service, voice mail, and the like. Telephone talks are more focused on dialog and normally interrupt people. These kind of messages should not interrupt people, unless urgent, and they do not need two-way information exchange. The second argument appies to instant messaging too. If only one message is to be send, one does not need instant messaging. Thus, one type of one-way message sending technology will survive.
   1.111 -
   1.112 -Whether email will be the one surviving, or short message service, or another one, does not matter. Probably it will be \name{unified messaging}, which includes all of the other ones in it, anyway. \MTA{}s are a kind of software needed for all of these messaging methods---programs that transfer and receive messages.
   1.113 -
   1.114 -
   1.115 -
   1.116 -
   1.117 -
   1.118  
   1.119  
   1.120  \section{What will be important}