E-Mail 2002 Evaluation Team - Mid-Eval Report on Mulberry
- March 2002
Based on results of previous evaluation efforts, and because of the presence
of Kerberos support, the team approached the evaluation hoping to determine
that Mulberry would be a supportable product.
The team has determined that while current testing results indicate that
Mulberry 2.1.2 is a functional and feature-rich product which meets the
basic functional requirements for a supported e-mail client, it should not
currently be adopted as a supported product. The team has decided that while
Mulberry is functional, powerful, and flexible, it is also a rather complex
program to configure and use and thus is currently not well suited for use
by the end user community. While more technically advanced users may be
more likely to benefit from the power and flexibility and thus willing to
put in the effort to learn how to use it effectively, it can not currently
be recommended as a supported product.
In addition to Kerberos support, Mulberry has been found to have some clear
advantages to other e-mail clients, including the wealth of advanced features
for managing multiple (especially IMAP) e-mail accounts and a powerful tool
for creating customized installers.
However, the team has also concluded that there would be some significant,
though perhaps not insurmountable, barriers to widespread adoption of Mulberry.
These include:
- A UI which is rather complex, not intuitive, and very dissimilar from
other currently supported e-mail clients. [Future releases promise to address
some of these issues, but are not yet available for testing].
- Various features are lacking which may be fairly minor when considered
individually, but which may be more serious taken as a whole (e.g. current
lack of good on-line help system, lack of in-line html viewing, current
lack of ease of use of LDAP directories for addressing messages).
Taken together, these findings suggest that the voluntary adoption rate
of Mulberry by end users is likely to be negligible, even if a site license
were to be obtained and even if it were the only supported solution that
would offer full Kerberos support.
If a transition to Mulberry were to be required of users, this would likely
require a good deal of time to prepare detailed documentation, train local
support providers, and provide ongoing support to users. Even after this
extensive effort, in the end, there would likely be a very large number
of dissatisfied users, and of overburdened support providers.
It would seem, therefore, that any decisions re: whether to require use
of Mulberry could only be made after careful analysis at the School or Center
level, since this is where (at least the ongoing) support will have to be
provided. The team has concluded that it can not be recommended as a fully
supported client at this time.
Since Mulberry is a fully Kerberized client available for the multiple
platforms supported at Penn, and the most promising candidate found during
previous evaluation efforts, the team recommends further evaluation as the
product matures. A new release promises to address some of the user interface
issues and may be available for a full evaluation effort in the Fall of
2002.
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