Florian von Kurnatowski - GenNext Collaboration Suite

Open. Unwired. Secure. Flexible. Thats what Scalix is all about. With over 675 corporations trusting with its deployment across 55 countries, the three times winner of LinuxWorld best in show award, Scalix is one of the best messaging solutions available today. Welcome to the world of open source email and collaborative groupware.
To tell you the truth, we have been patting our backs - for having Mr. Florian von Kurnatowski, Director of Product Management at Scalix on CrazyEngineers. Yes! We are extremely happy & excited to present our Small Talk with Florian von Kurnatowski...

CE: Hi Florian, you are the Director of Product Management at Scalix. Could you tell us more about your job?

Florian: Hi – first of all, thanks for having me and the great opportunity to talk to you about my work and our product; I think you guys have a pretty unique approach writing about technology and I enjoyed reading some of the other posts on your site while preparing for this talk.

Product Management, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting and challenging roles within any software development company or organization. First of all, you need to stay fully up to date with market trends and requirements, requests from existing and upcoming customers, the sales team and also listen carefully to support for issues customers may be having with your product. For a hybrid model like ours where we offer free - as in beer, remember, I am German! - and open source components as well, community input is almost equally important. I spend a lot of time reading on our forums and I believe I am still the number one contributor by posts, even though the community is now large enough to be self-maintaining when it comes to technical questions. The final part is a mid- to long-term (in software terms: think 1-1,5 years!) strategy that is designed to keep up a couple of unique things about your product and make a difference – and we have a number of pretty exciting things we are looking into. Can’t talk too much detail here, but stay tuned.

The next part is then to create release project plans for the development team. This has to take into account available resources, planned release dates - keeping input from marketing in mind with regards to conferences, shows and other events – and specific customer project requirements. Of course, there is always more demand for new features, enhancements, broader platform support and bug fixes than we have development capacity for, so basically it’s a constant search in getting the best possible results out of what you have – a constant exercise in optimization.

This sounds like a huge team effort, and it absolutely is. The challenge however, is that product management tries to drive the development organization in many different ways, but usually has only a very small team – I have one direct report to help me right now. Therefore, I need to negotiate quite a bit to find the resources across the company to make our product vision come true. This part of the job really defines your management and communication style. It’s very much looking for allies everywhere.

CE: Can you take us inside the Scalix open architecture platform?
Florian: Sure I can. While some people in product management come from the marketing side, I have a very technical background, and, believe it or not, while Scalix as a company was only founded in 2003, I’ve known the technology for more than 15 years now. Scalix is based on a foundation product we acquired from Hewlett-Packard, called HP OpenMail; that project was started in the late 80s, so it’s a very mature platform. The fundamental concept of the product was always to keep an open platform. As an example, we are very bold about our “Clients-of-Choice” strategy. In the old days of OpenMail that meant CC:Mail and MS-Mail, two clients most people have forgotten about. Later came the Exchange client, then Outlook. Outlook is still one of our more important clients today, but over time we have added AJAX-based Scalix Web Access, a very strong RIA (Rich Internet Application), Support for various Linux-based clients like KDE Kontact and Novell’s Evolution as well as Open Standards. The latter is becoming more relevant over time, starting with IMAP for email and now CalDAV for Calendaring – this way we can now support Apple’s Mac OS/X built-in iCal client as well as Mozilla’s Thunderbird and Lightning. And then there are the mobile clients – we are launching our own implementation of Microsoft’s market-leading ActiveSync Over-the-air protocol as we speak.

Openness and choice are our mottos in other directions – we support a very rich ecosystem with various anti-spam and anti-virus solutions, we can work with any LDAP-based directory, not “just” Active Directories like some other players, and we also give people open interfaces for email archiving, something that becomes more important every day with stricter compliance requirements imposed on our customers.
All this is based on a deep and rich technology stack. Our server core is basically self-written, highly optimized “old-school” C code, and we see no reason to change that. The newer interfaces are built as Java-based web services using SOAP, REST, WebDAV, XML and similar technologies, also providing for very powerful integration points for anyone wanting to base 3rd-party or custom application development on Scalix.

CE: What are the problems with existing messaging systems that engineers behind Scalix are trying to solve?

Florian: This is really the forward-looking part. I think the main problem with email systems is that they have become too clogged with things that shouldn’t be in there. People sitting in one office use email to transfer files between each other. A group of people working jointly creating a presentation forward multiple copies of the PowerPoint file among themselves, effectively turning their email system into a versioned filestore, which is a task that should really be fulfilled by an Enterprise Content Management system. Then people swap between email and IM conversation and neither of the two threads has the complete communication history and archive in it anymore. With all this happening, message store databases become larger and larger and harder to maintain for the system administrator. And keep in mind, this is a very mission critical system that your business relies on – assume it goes down in a disaster happening to your datacenter, the time to recover will directly depend on the size of your database. You really want to keep it small.

Furthermore, there is a pretty unique opportunity. People live in their email clients these days, whatever they may be – Outlook, a mobile device or your web browser. This is a very personal application. That’s the reason why some other companies like IBM with their Notes desktop try to turn a specific email client into the user’s workplace, almost replacing the desktop OS itself with it. Now, as I said, our philosophy is clients-of-choice, so with the exception of our web-based solution we are not in the email client business. Therefore, we have to find ways to map that workplace user experience on a broad set of clients, preserving as much functionality as possible. Our latest release, Scalix 11.4, offers a glimpse of what’s ahead. You can integrate with RSS feeds and WebCAL calendars right on the server, and, unlike other solutions, the data provided by those feeds is available in ALL your clients. This is different from a client-centric approach where you have to setup all of these everywhere, all the time, and it provides for a much more consistent and successful user experience.

This is really the way to go for us – Scalix has started to progress from a pure backend system storing email, calendar and contact data to more of a corporate information hub, pulling in information from various sources, however not copying or importing it, but proxying to it, delivering it to the user’s desktop – or, in the case of large file attachments received by email, even automatically externalizing it to storage more adequate for the type of data at hand, to really keep the message store size to what it needs to be. I think such a system will really meet the current and coming demands of email users in a much nicer way than most systems of today. Combine that with additional access channels including voice, enhanced mobile device support, and you really have a story here.

There is one thing I am jealous about looking at Microsoft – I would really love to have the “Exchange” product name for what I just talked about. I guess that won’t happen so we’ll have to come up with something different. Again, stay tuned.

CE: Is Scalix working on platform interfacing onto mobile phone software, making it more users friendly and creating a world of high end digital connectivity without keypad use?

Florian: Mobile device support is extremely important and we have a collection of options available here: web-based, through 3rd-party wireless servers and a new built-in ActiveSync solution. However, as I said, we are not really in the client business – our goal is to support leading client devices. When it comes to high-end mobile devices, for me Apple has really raised the bar with the iPhone. It’s not a perfect device, I’ve been using one since mid last year and I can find many things to improve. Also, Apple’s definition of openness can be subject of a pretty deep discussion as well. What no-one will doubt, however, is that they have blown away industry giants like Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft and RIM in terms of usability of mobile data and internet applications. I have tried web browsers on at least 20 different mobile devices, this is the first one that fits into my palm and that I want to use again. Others will follow; this has changed the market forever. Our job is to provide rich backend support for this and coming devices. Apple has decided to implement ActiveSync client-side, we are doing the server-side work, so I am using my iPhone with ActiveSync and Scalix server as the backend today, getting the benefits both from the device’s usability and our servers stability, performance and openness.

CE: How easy is it for a normal user to deploy this solution?

Florian: We really put a lot of effort into ease of installation. If you are setting up Scalix on a supported Linux platform, the actual installation happens within one integrated tool and takes no more than 15 minutes. Of course, then you have to setup internet connectivity, user accounts, client access and maybe perform some data migration, so it depends on your overall setup. As a datapoint, we have recently migrated a customer in Germany from a competing solution that they were not satisfied with in a single day – the customer bought our product in the morning and by the end of the day, 75 users were actually using Scalix. Lucky Punch.

CE: Linux + Scalix, is it the perfect replacement for Exchange + Windows?
Florian: Yes, absolutely. Many customers come to us and ask about migration to “Linux”. Now, especially if you have a Windows background, it’s pretty easy to mess up this first step. I’ve seen people trying to replace their Windows NT domain with OpenLDAP and Samba as a start. Now, while both these tools are great in their capabilities and they offer a very adequate replacement for Microsoft products in many ways, they are somewhat rough on the edges as they get that “latest and greatest” raw community feel. This can be intimidating to organizations new to Linux and to be successful there you need someone who really knows what they are doing. For such customers, I would always recommend to go with a fully-integrated and tested commercial application first, basically using Linux as the strongest, most flexible, highly secure operating system platform underneath. For choice of applications, look at running an Oracle server on Linux, even choose SAP – or go with Scalix. It’s a safe and sound starting point. This is also the reason why Xandros, our mother company, acquired Scalix – their motto is “Making Linux Work For You”, and that fits what Scalix is trying to do for our commercial customers, while keeping all possible doors open for free community use.

CE: How is Scalix able to integrate with third party services and solutions? E.g. an ERP system, a CRM system, an analytics tool, a AV?

Florian: I think I have probably answered the question already. We provide many open interfaces based on standards such as IMAP, WebDAV, SOAP, REST. Our strategy is server-side integration so that all clients benefit from it. Email itself is a powerful integration interface. Scalix has been used with commercial and open source ERP and CRM systems such as Sugar CRM or SAP; customers are using ClamAV antivirus with it, alongside a commercial solution from Kaspersky or Trendmicro. The doors are wide, wide open. Of course, some customers prefer a more tightly integrated and preconfigured solution. We already have a number of vendor relationships – we provide integrated AntiSpam and AntiVirus from our technology partner Commtouch, a third-party wireless server exists from Notify servicing all kinds of devices including Blackberries and our German partner SEP provides a fully-integrated backup solution allowing for single mail restore from a graphical, easy-to-use UI.

CE: Does Scalix work on a collaborative mode with current email exchange platforms such as Microsoft Outlook or Novell evolution? How?

Florian: Absolutely. As I said, clients of choice is our motto and both of those, amongst many more, are fully supported by Scalix. This is either based on Open Standards, such as with Mozilla Sunbird or Thunderbird/Lightning email and calendaring, or we provide a number of connectors – a commercial one for Outlook and an open-source one for Evolution. A connector for KDE Kontact was created in an independent open source project that we didn’t even know about. I really love it when I find those things much later.

CE: Do you sell processor specific licenses instead of user specific licenses?

Florian: We want to keep our license model simple. We have 4 classes of systems: the free Community Edition, a Small Business Edition, an Enterprise Edition, and a Hosting Edition. Pricing is mostly based on the number of mailboxes hosted on the servers. The one difference is Community and Small Business vs. Enterprise and Hosting – the former are single-server only while the latter support distributed multi-server environments. Once you go there, however, there is no limit in the number of servers you can deploy; it’s again only based on mailboxes and users. We don’t believe in writing books about our license structure. Our pricelist still fits on a single sheet of paper.

CE: Why is it called Collaboration Suite? What can the users achieve by collaboration of their emails?

Florian: It’s more than email – we provide calendaring, contact management, public folders, delegate access, access permissions, data sharing, resource booking and other things – that defines a basic collaboration environment. Pulling in external data sources like file servers or news and calendar feeds enhances this experience. At the end of the day, it’s about your workplace, about how you spend your time in the office, on the road, at home, in your work and personal lives. Our tools help you to do this in a collaborative manner with your coworkers, colleagues, friends, partners. That’s networking and collaboration for me.

CE: Do you see a strategic shift towards open source email management in near future?

Florian: Open source is one possible development model and a very successful one. We ship a number of our components as open source and will continue to do so in the future where it makes sense. Given the number of players that base their email servers and collaboration tools on open source, it is probably one of the more relevant areas. This seems logical, because it is ubiquitous, it is one of the applications that affects the typical open source crows, students, technology enthusiasts, everyone, so I think we feel pretty good in this space and it will continue to grow. On the customer side, all Fortune 500 companies use some kind of open source today, so it’s there and it works; business models around it are still evolving and possibly it will need some more time to balance them out, but in general I’d see this shift happening and it will be the proprietary vendors that will see the need to adjust to it. I see full and deep integration of Open Standards as a good chance to do that. As an example, we are a member of calconnect.org which drives CalDAV and related technologies. A good year ago, Microsoft joined the organization and while they are not offering CalDAV in Exchange today, they are very interested in better interoperability and I think they take the existence of the non-proprietary world as a given for their daily business.

CE: What are the features that give Scalix an edge over its competitors like Zimbra’s ZCS?

Florian: I really don’t want to go into a feature-by-feature comparison with other products in our space. In general, most are useful products and the decision which one works best for your business is one that you have to take yourself. We invite everyone to try out our stuff, in fact we are very easy about independent reviews and comparisons. So far, we have held up well – as an example we recently won infoWorld’s prestigious BOSS (Best of Open Source Software) award for groupware and collaboration for the 2nd year in a row – their assessment was that we are the most balanced solution. I think that part speaks for itself. We have a very mature product with broad appeal. If customers come in asking about certain features and integrations, most times we can simply say: Been there, done that! And that would include me, personally.

CE: How do you make good use of the developer community keen on experimenting with open source emails exchange platform?

Florian: This is one of the bigger challenges; so far, our community is mostly one of users and admins. I must admit that for a developer, the sheer size of our product – just imagine 20 years of development time – is intimidating and will certainly deter people from going in knee-deep. We have seen localizations, integrations through our web services interface and open source client development. It’s been growing steadily and we continue to support every developer starting stuff based on Scalix through our forum – our own engineers provide a lot of 1:1 assistance there.

CE: Many thanks for talking to us, Florian. What message would you like to give to the members of Crazy engineers’ community?

Florian: Take your pick: (1) Write 10 lines of good code every day - keeps the doctor away! (2) Only a dead bug is a good bug! (That’s actually a quote from “Starship Troopers”, my favourite “Soft Splatter” type movie, although that could be because of Denise Richards being in it) (3) Plain and simple – keep up the good spirits and enjoy being part of such a lively crowd. Crazy is good.
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CrazyEngineers is thankful to Mr. Stephen E. Harris for his help & support in making this small talk possible.