(Note: The original of this document can be found here. -thb)
It's time to update that column.
I am more convinced that the X.400 standard is on its last legs when it comes to interpersonal e-mail, and that the Internet has become the de facto standard for the regular exchange of e-mail between people and organizations.
There are four reasons for this.
The first reason is because X.400 is simply too complicated. People just can't understand an e-mail standard that requires that you have knowledge of terms like administrative domains, private domains, organizational units, user-defined attributes and other such silliness.
People will not work with a standard that requires a thick manual merely to figure out how to address a message to someone else.
I have several accounts that could be reached by X.400, each of which could be used in a different way, depending on what system you come from. You might reach me as c:us,a:mcimail;f:jim; s:carroll; on one system, or you might reach me using the method mhs!c=us/ad=mcimail/pn=ji m_carroll, while on yet a third system you might send to me using the form jim_carroll/jacarrollconsulting mcimail/usa.
These can be considered simple examples in the world of X.400.
At one point, I was helping a client reach someone at Hewlett-Packard, via an X.400 address of the form surname/admd=telemail/c=us/o=hp/prmd=hp/s=surname/g=firsname.
If you can believe, some people actually print X.400 addresses on their business cards.
The second reason X.400 is dead is that anyone beyond us computer geeks will simply refuse to learn it, understand it, or use it.
The chief financial officer at a major client of mine just received a fax from a large public accounting firm, asking if the organization was equipped to do e-mail via X.400. The fax went on to describe how to figure out an X.400 address, and was three pages long. A sane and rational person will have tossed the fax into the garbage even before finishing the first page.
The CFO also has a simple Internet address, and was quite confused as to why anyone would pick a more complicated method.
Think of it from his perspective : with an Internet ID as simple as someone@somewhere, why would anyone in their right mind choose a system that required an alphabet X.400 address?
No wonder we have a tough time getting money for technology projects, if we suggest to sane people that they use such ridiculous, geeky computer standards. Simply put, folks, X.400 addressing is for geeks, and won't be learned by anyone beyond that.
The third thing that made me realize that X.400 is dead as an inter-organization e-mail standard was the release of the statistic that 46 per cent of the largest publicly-traded companies in the U.S. had some form of Internet presence by July 1994.
The Internet continues to grow by leaps and bounds, particularly for the exchange of email between corporations.
The explosion in Internet email is simply remarkable. In the last six months, I have communicated with individuals from around the world, including many Fortune 500s, through many thousands of Internet messages. I have not sent one X.400 message. It's too painful.
Finally, few people in organizations know how to use X.400.
In one client project, I was assisting a company that wanted to establish e-mail communications to major Fortune 500s. When the recipient was on the Internet, it was a piece of cake and took two minutes, since people tend to know their Internet address.
When X.400 was involved, we usually had to work our way through layers of bureaucrats to discover the particular individual who knew 'X.400 speak.' It took days and weeks instead of minutes.
This is a standard? Where we have to try to find the one organizational expert on X.400?
People pay me to help them figure out how to use X.400. They pay me! Isn't there something wrong with this picture? An addressing standard that is so complicated that you have to hire a consultant to figure it out? It's the same as having to hire someone to help you understand how to dial your telephone! It's a ridiculous state of affairs.
Fax took off because people understood the concept of a photocopier plugged into the telephone -- and the way to reach any fax anywhere in the world was a simple telephone number.
Internet e-mail is exploding in use because people understand the concept of an ID that is basically, someone@somewhere.
X.400 is dead, because it isn't as simple as the telephone, fax, and Internet e-mail. It will probably remain in some form to support high volume, EDI-based communications between major Fortune 500 organizations.
But for simple, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day communications between people, it's dead, caput, game over.
$Id: lastlegs.html 1.1 1995/07/12 23:40:03 thb Exp thb $