InformationWeek

Microsoft Deal Boosts Messaging Technology

By Jeff Angus

icr osoft moved to strengthen its enterprise messaging technology last week by acquiring switch vendor LinkAge Software Inc. The Toronto company is a leading provider of connections that link diverse messaging systems, including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus cc:Mail, Lotus Notes, and IBM's Office Vision and SNA Distribution Services.

The 50-employee company's flagship product is LinkAge Message Exchange 2.0, released last month. LinkAge's technology is expected to be folded into the next release of Exchange; until then, it will be available as a free add-on.

The acquisition marks a significant shift in Microsoft's strategy for Exchange. Until now, the company "naively expected large companies to move 100% of their E-mail to Exchange in one fell swoop," says Joyce Graff, a senior analyst with Gartner Group Inc., an IT advisory firm in Stamford, Conn. "In real life, that doesn't work well. Migration takes time."

Graff adds that LinkAge's technology will be useful both for migration to Exchange and for perm anent coexistence of diverse systems. The technology is already used widely to connect Lotus Notes messages to legacy IBM mainframe systems as well as to Exchange, and LinkAge has been providing Lotus with some of the code for such links. As a result, says LinkAge president Bob Jull, "Microsoft now has better Notes-to-mainframe connections than Lotus itself has."

Eric Brown, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., says the acquisition is an answer to Lotus' 1995 purchase of Soft-Switch, a LinkAge rival. He says LinkAge's directory synchronization capabilities will strengthen Microsoft's offering in the directory area while users wait for next year's release of Active Directory.

Neither company would discuss terms of the deal.

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