On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Kurt Buff<kurt.b...@gmail.com> wrote: > That's especially true if the money isn't there to support the infrastructure.
Certainly, if one can't afford the infrastructure to implement business demands, that's a time when IT has to push back. "Pay up or shut up." But if the money's there, it's just a matter of implementation, assuming the policy-makers decide it is appropriate use of funds. > SMTP != FTP, pure and simple. With 8-bit MIME, SMTP might actually be better than FTP. SMTP only uses a single port. ;-) The argument "email isn't designed to transfer files" is fundamentally the wrong way to approach the problem. People find it's convenient to send files to named recipients in outside organizations -- and why is that wrong? IT is suppose to be an enabler. If email isn't designed to transfer files, the correct approach is to change the design. Now, the objection "most people's systems can't support that" is a valid pragmatic argument, since new designs don't get implemented all at once. There was a time when anything other than 7-bit ASCII plain text, no MIME or HTML or anything else, was unacceptable for that very reason. But the world has moved on. Now Unicode and HTML in message bodies are quite common. With increases in storage capacity, server capacity, and bandwidth, and SMTP extensions for things like Unicode and 8-bit MIME, email can and is evolving. Google figured that out before almost anyone else did. Whether you or your organization are on the leading or trailing edge of the adoption curve doesn't mean it isn't so. (Note that being on the trailing edge isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most businesses are conservative, and rightly so.) I remember NetWare admins fighting tooth-and-nail against IP on LANs, too. -- Ben ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
