Every niche has its nicknames. In communications, the borg traditionally meant Microsoft. Lately, the rapid rise of GMail has some pointing the borg-label at Google. Wrong and wrong.

When Microsoft originally unleashed Exchange, you could count the number of SMTP mailservers for Windows on one hand. Redmond was challenged more by creating a market for Windows-based email servers among Small-and-Medium Businesses than stealing a piece of it. You gotta give the Devil his due. Microsoft Exchange for Windows was a phenomally successful product… sold millions of copies.

As time went on, more and more Windows email servers came online, cleaned up bugs, and became great messaging servers themselves. Products like CommuniGate Pro, Ipswitch Imail, Mercury/32, and Merak Mail Server each grabbed a slice of the market.

At the same time, more network managers who had started with Windows filled in with a single-task Linux server to do this or that. As comfort levels increased, admins found exim, Postfix, qmail, Sendmail, and host of other powerful and secure SMTP platforms. (geek alert: we listed them alphabetically so don’t even think about it;)

How many powerful, inexpensive and secure email servers are out there today? How many admins who consider themselves Windows folk are simultaneously running flavor(s) of Linux, BSD and/or Unix? Counting is futile.

Faced with a horde of cheap & high-quality alternatives serving every conceivable and individual SMTP niche, Microsoft chose the easier route. Beef up Exchange and use it to muscle in on an already proven, high-profit market, where there are fewer and more targetable competitors.

Has the strategy resulted in Exchange 5.5 casualties? Obviously. But in Redmond war rooms, the losses were surely regrettable, but necessary. Survival depends on profitable growth, which isn’t going to happen at the simple SMTP mailserver level.

In the end, what groupware competitors see as Microsoft’s malevolent march is viewed by the hordes of SMTP email vendors and their customers as more of a strategic retreat. The bad news for Microsoft and other collaboration sellers: The horde’s slowly but steadily adding collaboration functions, too. Non-stop feature and function bloat is the only way out for any of the collaboration giants.

Because the real borg are coming.

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