docs/diploma

changeset 105:9c6a6c210e92

just commit it now: ... lots of changes, rearranges and new text in market analysis
author meillo@marmaro.de
date Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:14:24 +0100
parents d089c58e6d67
children ec7f73829415
files thesis/tex/3-MarketAnalysis.tex
diffstat 1 files changed, 224 insertions(+), 45 deletions(-) [+]
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     1.1 --- a/thesis/tex/3-MarketAnalysis.tex	Thu Nov 20 21:13:14 2008 +0100
     1.2 +++ b/thesis/tex/3-MarketAnalysis.tex	Thu Nov 20 21:14:24 2008 +0100
     1.3 @@ -1,64 +1,242 @@
     1.4  \chapter{Market analysis}
     1.5 +\label{chap:market-analysis}
     1.6  
     1.7 +This chapter analyses the current situation and future trends, for electronic communication in general and email in particular. First electronic mail's position within other electronic communication technologies is located. Then trends for the whole field of electronic communication are shown. Afterwards opportunities and threats in the market for email are located and the trends for email are shown. The insights of these analysis result in a summary of things that are important for developing future-prove email software.
     1.8  
     1.9 -\section{The future of communication}
    1.10 -\label{chap:future-of-communication}
    1.11 -As globalization proceeds, long distance communication becomes more and more important. This chapter tries to locate trends in communication methods and their impact on the future for communication. The insights gathered from the analysis will be applied to \masqmail, afterwards.
    1.12  
    1.13  
    1.14 -\subsection{Communication methods}
    1.15 -\label{sec:communication-methods}
    1.16 -Today's long distance communication methods are either written or spoken information. And on the other side, they can be classified by the time between responses.
    1.17 +\section{Electronic communication technologies}
    1.18  
    1.19 -A classification of long distance communication methods is shown in figure %\ref{fig:}.
    1.20 -% slow     |              |             |
    1.21 -%          |              | letter      | days
    1.22 -%          |              |             |
    1.23 -%          |              |             |
    1.24 -%          | answering    | email       |
    1.25 -%          |   machine    | telefax     | few seconds
    1.26 -%          |              | SMS         |
    1.27 -% fast     |              |             |
    1.28 -%          | telephone    | IM          | real time
    1.29 -% -----------------------------------------------------
    1.30 -% response | spoken       | written     | delivery time
    1.31 +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.
    1.32  
    1.33 -% TODO: find reference literature
    1.34 +%todo: electronic communication vs. digital communication
    1.35  
    1.36 -\subsubsection*{Speed}
    1.37 -Communication gets faster in general. Slow mediums as letters get substituted by electronic mail, which is delivered within seconds. Also communication becomes more transmitted through digital channels. This can be seen at the telephone which's information is now more and more transported in bits over the internet link. Also telefaxes are succeeded by email or are transported within email. Instant messaging can be seen as the written couterpart to the telephone; not to substitute it completely, but to be used if it is more useful for the information to transmit.
    1.38 +As globalization proceeds and long distance communication becomes more and more important. The future of electronic communication is bright.
    1.39  
    1.40 -Many of the digital communication methods gained success by beeing cheaper than their counterparts. One example here is instant messaging in contrast to the telephone. As phoning costs fell, it became more popular again. The last years showed, that communication cost degreased dropped generally, caused by the transport through digital channels. And nothing to see, that would make them rise again.
    1.41 +Electronic communication includes the following technologies: electronic mail (email), instant messaging (\name{IM}), chats (e.g.\ \NAME{IRC}), short message service (\NAME{SMS}), voicemail, video messages, and Voice over \NAME{IP} (VoIP), as well as \NAME{GSM} and \NAME{UMTS}.
    1.42  
    1.43 -It seems as if in future will be low-cost communication methods available, which will be digitally transmitted.
    1.44  
    1.45 -\subsubsection*{Variety}
    1.46 -Regarding the variety of communication methods shows a change, too. Communication systems are more easy to establish today, so more get established. This leads to more methods a person uses. But not only in the amount, also in parallel. For example when two people talk to each other on the phone, one might send a URI\footnote{Uniform Resource Identifier} by email meanwhile, because oral communication is not well suited to exchange such data. Another example for in parallel used communication channels is video chatting. Ony typically sees the other person, talks to it, and additionally has a instant messaging facility for exchanging written information.
    1.47 +\subsection{Classification}
    1.48 +Types of electronic communication can be divided in written and recorded information. Recorded information, like audio or video data, is accessable only in a linear way by spooling and replay. Written information, on the other hand, can be accessed in arbitary sequence, detail and speed.
    1.49  
    1.50 -Parallel usage of different kinds of communication channels will be important in future. The most common combinations are one for spoken and one for written information. But one for dialogs and one for sending documents will be important too.
    1.51 +Another possible separation is to distinguished synchron and asynchron communication. Syncron communication are direct dialogs with little delay. Telephone conversation is an example. Asynchron communication are one-way message systems; of course, dialogs are possible here as well, but not in the same direct fashion. These two groups can also be split by the time of data delivery. Synchron communication requires nearly real-time delivery, while for asynchron communication message delivery times of several seconds or even minutes are sufficent.
    1.52  
    1.53 -\subsubsection*{Hardware}
    1.54 -Next about the hardware needed for communicating. On the one side stands the telephone, now available as the mobile phone. It provides spoken dialog by calling, spoken messages with the included answering machine and written messages in form of short message service. On the other side stands the letter and its relatives. They need pen and paper, a telefax machine or in most today's cases a computer. They typically send documents, only instant messaging is focused on dialog.
    1.55 +Figure \ref{fig:comm-classification} shows a classification of communication technologies sorted by these two criteria. Email and \NAME{SMS} are written and asynchron communication; \NAME{IM} and chats are written information too, but synchron. Recorded information are voicemail and video messages as examples for asynchron communication, and VoIP and \NAME{GSM}/\NAME{UMTS} as examples for synchron communication.
    1.56  
    1.57 -The last years finally brought the two groups together, with \name{smart phones} being the merging element. Smart phones are computers in the size of mobile phones. They provide both functions, using it as telephones and as computers.
    1.58 +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 asynchron communication additional to being a chat system. The reasons why it is sorted to dialog communication are its primary use for dialog communication and the very fast---instant---delivery time.
    1.59  
    1.60 -It matches well the requirements of telephoning and short message service, for which it was designed of course. Also providing being suitable for instant messaging in what is needed additionally to the telephone and short message service. The only problem is the minimal keyboard available to insert text. This also affects writing documents in case of email. It can be done but not very comfortably. Further communication methods include voice and video messages.
    1.61 +Email is not limited to written information, at least since the advent of \NAME{MIME}, which allows to include multimedia content in textual email messages. Thus recorded information can be sent as subparts of emails. The same applies to Instant Messaging too, where file transfer is an additional subservice offered by most systems. In general recorded information can be transmitted in an encoded textual form.
    1.62  
    1.63 -This leaves us with the need for ordinary computers for the field of exchanging documents, and as better input hardware for all written input.
    1.64 +
    1.65 +
    1.66 +%\begin{figure}
    1.67 +%	\begin{center}
    1.68 +%\begin{verbatim}
    1.69 +% ---------------------------------------------------
    1.70 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.71 +% messages    |  email           | voicemail        |
    1.72 +% asynchron   |  SMS             | video messages   |
    1.73 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.74 +% ---------------------------------------------------
    1.75 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.76 +% dialog      |  IM              | VoIP             |
    1.77 +% synchron    |  chat            | GSM/UMTS (?)     |
    1.78 +%             |                  | video conference |
    1.79 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.80 +% ---------------------------------------------------
    1.81 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.82 +%             | written          | recorded         |
    1.83 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.84 +
    1.85 +
    1.86 +
    1.87 +% ---------------------------------------------------
    1.88 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.89 +% messages    |  email  SMS      | (makes no sense) |
    1.90 +% asynchron   |  video messages  |                  |
    1.91 +%             |  voicemail       |                  |
    1.92 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.93 +% ---------------------------------------------------
    1.94 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.95 +% dialog      |  IM              | VoIP             |
    1.96 +% synchron    |  chat            | GSM/UMTS (?)     |
    1.97 +%             |                  | video conference |
    1.98 +%             |                  |                  |
    1.99 +% ---------------------------------------------------
   1.100 +%             |                  |                  |
   1.101 +%             | documents        | streaming        |
   1.102 +%             |                  |                  |
   1.103 +%\end{verbatim}
   1.104 +%	\end{center}
   1.105 +%	\caption{Classification of electronic communication}
   1.106 +%	\label{fig:comm-classification}
   1.107 +%\end{figure}
   1.108 +
   1.109 +
   1.110 +\input{kvmacros}
   1.111 +\kvunitlength=3cm
   1.112 +\kvnoindex
   1.113 +
   1.114 +\begin{figure}
   1.115 +	\begin{center}
   1.116 +\karnaughmap{2}{}{
   1.117 +  {\parbox{\kvunitlength}{asynchron\\(messages)}}
   1.118 +  {written}
   1.119 +  {\parbox{\kvunitlength}{synchron\\(dialog)}}
   1.120 +  {recorded}
   1.121 +}{
   1.122 +	{\parbox{0.8\kvunitlength}{email\\\NAME{SMS}}}
   1.123 +	{\parbox{0.8\kvunitlength}{voicemail\\video messages}}
   1.124 +	{\parbox{0.8\kvunitlength}{\NAME{IM}\\chat}}
   1.125 +	{\parbox{0.8\kvunitlength}{VoIP\\\NAME{GSM}/\NAME{UMTS}\\video conferencing}}
   1.126 +}{}
   1.127 +	\end{center}
   1.128 +	\caption{Classification of electronic communication}
   1.129 +	\label{fig:comm-classification}
   1.130 +\end{figure}
   1.131 +
   1.132 +
   1.133 +
   1.134 +
   1.135 +\subsection{Life cycle analysis}
   1.136 +Life cycle analysis are common for products but also for technologies. This one here is for electronic communication technologies. The first dimensions regarded is the life time of the subject. It is segmented into the introduction, growth, mature, saturation, and decline phases. The second dimension can display sales, market share, importance, or similar values. The graph has always an S-line shape, with a slow start, a rapidly increasing first half, the highest level in the third quater, and a slowly declining end. Reaching the end of the life cycle means, the subject is inherited by its successor or the market situation changed thus making it oldfashioned.
   1.137 +
   1.138 +The current position on the life cycle of the introduced communication technologies is depicted in figure \ref{fig:comm-lifecycle}. It is important to notice that there is no time line matching for all of them---some life cycles are shorter than others---the shape of the graph, however, is the same.
   1.139 +
   1.140 +Video messages and voicemail are technologies in the introduction phase. Voice over \NAME{IP} and \NAME{UMTS} are heavily growing these days. Instant Messaging has reached maturation, but still growing. Email and \NAME{GSM} are examples for technologies in the saturation phase. Declining does none of the above mentioned; telefaxes would be an example for a declining technology.
   1.141 +
   1.142 +\begin{figure}
   1.143 +	\begin{center}
   1.144 +		\begin{verbatim}
   1.145 +|            |             |          |    ***#***  |          |
   1.146 +|            |             |          |*#**   GSM **|          |
   1.147 +|            |             |      ***** email       ******     |
   1.148 +|            |             |    **    |             |     *****|
   1.149 +|            |             |*#**      |             |          |
   1.150 +|            |           *** IM       |             |          |
   1.151 +|            |         **  |          |             |          |
   1.152 +|            |      *#*    |          |             |          |
   1.153 +|            |    ** VoIP  |          |             |          |
   1.154 +|            |  *#         |          |             |          |
   1.155 +|        voice * UMTS      |          |             |          |
   1.156 +| video  mail**            |          |             |          |
   1.157 +| mess.   #**|             |          |             |          |
   1.158 +|    #****   |             |          |             |          |
   1.159 +|****        |             |          |             |          |
   1.160 +----------------------------------------------------------------
   1.161 +|            |             |          |             |          |
   1.162 +| introduct. | growth      | mature   | saturation  | decline  |
   1.163 +		\end{verbatim}
   1.164 +	\end{center}
   1.165 +	\caption{Life cycle of electronic communication technologies}
   1.166 +	\label{fig:comm-lifecycle}
   1.167 +\end{figure}
   1.168 +
   1.169 +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 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.
   1.170 +
   1.171 +But life cycles positions change as the subject or the market changes. An examples is the \name{Flash} animation software. The product's change from a drawing and animation system to a technology for website building, advertising, and movie distribution, and the then changing target market, made it slip back on the life cycle. If the email system would evolve to become the basis for Unified Messaging, a similar slip back would be the consequence. An example for a changing market are the \NAME{DVD} standards \NAME{DVD+} and \NAME{DVD-}. With the upcoming next generation formats BlueRay and \NAME{HD-DVD}, a much sooner decline of \NAME{DVD+} and \NAME{DVD-} started, even before reaching their last development steps in storage size. Such can happen to email too, if Unified Messaging is a revolution to the email system instead of an evolution.
   1.172 +
   1.173 +
   1.174 +
   1.175 +
   1.176 +\subsection{Trends}
   1.177 +The following trends will focus on email and the asynchron communication technology.
   1.178 +
   1.179 +\subsubsection*{Consolidation}
   1.180 +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.
   1.181 +
   1.182 +Today email still is the major asynchron communication technology and it probably will be it for the next years. As Unified Messaging needs similar transfer facilities to email, it may to be an evolution not a revolution. Hence \mta{}s will still have importance in future, maybe in a modified way.
   1.183 +%todo: decentral organization, like the internet -> MTAs are well suited -> further technologies will need something similar
   1.184 +
   1.185 +
   1.186 +\subsubsection*{Integration}
   1.187 +Integration of communication technologies becomes popular. This goes beyond consolidation, because communication technologies of different kinds are bundled together to make communication more convenient for human. User interfaces tend to this direction. The underlying technologies will get grouped, but it seems as if synchron and asynchron communication can not be joined together in a sane way, so they will probably only be fusioned at the surface.
   1.188 +
   1.189 +
   1.190 +
   1.191 +
   1.192 +
   1.193 +\subsubsection*{Communication hardware}
   1.194 +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}.
   1.195 +
   1.196 +The last years finally brought the two groups together, with \name{smart phones} being the merging hardware element. Smart phones are computers in the size of mobile phones, or mobile phones with the capabilities of computers. They provide both functions, being telephones and computers.
   1.197 +
   1.198 +Smart Phones match well the requirements of recorded data, for which it was designed of course. Writing text is not good to do with the minimal keyboards available for smart phones; speech to text converters may provide help in future. This leaves us with the need for ordinary computers for the field of exchanging documents and as better input hardware for all written input.
   1.199 +
   1.200 +It seems as if a combination of computers and smart phones will be the hardware used for communication in future. Both specialized to the best matching communication technologies, but supporting the others too. Hence facilities for transfering information off and onto the devices will be needed.
   1.201 +
   1.202 +
   1.203 +
   1.204 +
   1.205 +
   1.206 +
   1.207 +
   1.208 +\section{Electronic mail}
   1.209 +
   1.210 +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: 
   1.211 +
   1.212 +
   1.213 +\subsection{\NAME{SWOT} analysis}
   1.214 +
   1.215 +A \NAME{SWOT} analysis regards the strengths and weaknesses of a subject against the opportunities and threats of its market. The background for the analysis is the goal to reach with the subject. In this case, the main goal is to make email future-safe.
   1.216 +
   1.217 +The market's main threat is \emph{spam email}, also named \name{junk email} or \name{unsolicited commercial email} (\NAME{UCE}). Spam mail is also a weakness of the email system, because it can not prevent it.
   1.218 +
   1.219 +Opportunities of the market are large data transfers, coming from multimedia content. Email is weak related to that kind of data: the data needs to be encoded to \NAME{ASCII} and and stresses mail servers a lot. The use of various hardware to access mail is another opportunity of the market. The software and infrastructure needed to transfer mail within this network might be a weakness of the email system. An opportunity of the market that is a strength of electronic mail is its standardization. Few other communication technologies are standardized and thus freely available in a similar way. Another opportunity and strength is the modular and extendable structure of electronic mail; it can easily evolve to new requirements.
   1.220 +
   1.221 +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.
   1.222 +
   1.223 +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
   1.224 +
   1.225 +\begin{figure}
   1.226 +	\begin{center}
   1.227 +		\begin{verbatim}
   1.228 + ---------------------------------------------------
   1.229 +             |                  |                  |
   1.230 + strength    | standard         |                  |
   1.231 + of email    | modular,extendabl|                  |
   1.232 +             |                  |                  |
   1.233 + ---------------------------------------------------
   1.234 +             | big data transfer|                  |
   1.235 + weaknesses  | too big for phone|                  |
   1.236 + of email    |                  | spam             |
   1.237 +             |                  |                  |
   1.238 + ---------------------------------------------------
   1.239 +             |                  |                  |
   1.240 +             | opportunities of | threats of       |
   1.241 +             | market           | market           |
   1.242 +             |                  |                  |
   1.243 +		\end{verbatim}
   1.244 +	\end{center}
   1.245 +	\caption{SWOT analysis for email}
   1.246 +	\label{fig:email-swot}
   1.247 +\end{figure}
   1.248 +
   1.249 +The analysis shows what should be done to achieve the goal (Making email future-safe). Spam mail should be reduced as good as possible. Solutions for large data transfers and infrastructures with more nodes moving within the net should be developed, there is a lot of potential. Standardization, modularity and extendability should be used to go even further, these are the key advantages of email.
   1.250 +
   1.251 +
   1.252 +
   1.253 +\subsubsection*{Differences in \freesw}
   1.254 +
   1.255 +
   1.256 +\subsubsection*{Consumers}
   1.257 +
   1.258 +
   1.259  
   1.260  
   1.261  
   1.262  \subsection{Trends for electronic mail}
   1.263 -\label{sec:email-trends}
   1.264 -The previous section stated that electronic mail will still be important in future to complete the communication methods provided by phone and instant messaging.
   1.265  
   1.266 -But will emailing in future not be the same as emailing now. This will mainly affect how email is transfered.
   1.267 +
   1.268 +But emailing in future will not be the same as emailing now. This will mainly affect how email is transfered.
   1.269 +
   1.270  
   1.271  \subsubsection*{Provider oriented emailing}
   1.272  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.
   1.273  
   1.274  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.
   1.275  
   1.276 +
   1.277  \subsubsection*{Provider independence}
   1.278  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.
   1.279  
   1.280 @@ -66,10 +244,6 @@
   1.281  
   1.282  After \mta{}s have not been popular for users in the last time, the next years might bring them back to them. Maybe in a few years nearly everyone will have one running at home \dots\ possibly without knowing about it.
   1.283  
   1.284 -\subsubsection*{Is email future-safe?}
   1.285 -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.
   1.286 -
   1.287 -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.
   1.288  
   1.289  \subsubsection*{Pushing versus polling}
   1.290  The retrieval of email is a field that is about to change now. The old way is to fetch email by polling the server that holds the personal mail box. This polling is done in regular intervals, often once every five to thirty minutes. The mail transfer from the mail box to the \name{mail user agent} is initiated from the mail client side. The disadvantage herewith is the delay between mail actually arriving on the server and the user finally having the message on his screen.
   1.291 @@ -79,6 +253,7 @@
   1.292  The push concept, however could swap over to computers when using a home server and no external provider. A possible scenario is a home server receiving mail from the internet and pushing it to computers and smart phones. The configuration could be done by the user through some simple interface, like one configures his telephone system to have different telephone numbers ring on specified phones.
   1.293  %FIXME: add reference to push email
   1.294  
   1.295 +
   1.296  \subsubsection*{Internet Mail 2000}
   1.297  Another concept to redesign the electronic mail system, but this time focused on mail transfer is named ``Internet Mail 2000''. It was proposed by Daniel J.\ Bernstein, the creater of \name{qmail}. Similar approaches were independently introduced by others too.
   1.298  
   1.299 @@ -89,14 +264,20 @@
   1.300  %FIXME: add references for IM2000
   1.301  
   1.302  
   1.303 -\section{Market analysis}
   1.304  
   1.305 -\subsection{\NAME{SWOT} analysis}
   1.306 -%TODO
   1.307  
   1.308 +\subsection{Is email future-safe?}
   1.309 +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.
   1.310  
   1.311 +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.
   1.312  
   1.313 -\subsection{What will be important}
   1.314 +
   1.315 +
   1.316 +
   1.317 +
   1.318 +
   1.319 +
   1.320 +\section{What will be important}
   1.321  \label{sec:important-for-mtas}
   1.322  Now that it is explained why email will survive (in some changed but related form), it is time to think about the properties required for \mta{}s in the next years. As the fields and kinds of usage change, the requirement change too.
   1.323  
   1.324 @@ -115,7 +296,7 @@
   1.325  
   1.326  Another important requirement for all kinds of software will be security. There is a constant trend going from completely non-secured software from the 70s and 80s over growing security awareness in the 90s to security being a primary goal now. This leads to the conclusion that software security will even more important in the next years. As more clients get connected to the internet and especially more computers are waiting for incoming connections (like an \MTA\ in a home server), there are more possibilities to break into systems. Securing software systems will be done with increasing effort in future.
   1.327  
   1.328 -``Plug-and-play''-able hardware with preconfigured software running can be expected to become popular. Like someone buys a set-top box to watch Pay-TV today, he might be buying a box acting as mail server in a few years. He plugs the power cable in, inserts his email address in a web interface and selects the clients (workstation computers or smart phones) to which mail should be send and from which mail is accepted to receive. That's all. It would just work then, like everyone expects it from a set-top box today.
   1.329 +``Plug-and-play''-able hardware with preconfigured software running can be expected to become popular. Like someone buys a set-top box to watch Pay-\NAME{TV} today, he might be buying a box acting as mail server in a few years. He plugs the power cable in, inserts his email address in a web interface and selects the clients (workstation computers or smart phones) to which mail should be send and from which mail is accepted to receive. That's all. It would just work then, like everyone expects it from a set-top box today.
   1.330  
   1.331  Containing secure and robust software is a pre-requisite for such boxes to make that vision possible.
   1.332  
   1.333 @@ -125,5 +306,3 @@
   1.334  
   1.335  
   1.336  
   1.337 -\section{Differences in \freesw}
   1.338 -