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 Why Architecture
The Messaging Forum believes that the only way to achieve its mission
is by using an Open Systems Architected approach that identifies the
components of the electronic messaging system and the interaction
between those components defined in terms of standard interfaces.
The Internet E-Mail system is a mature system that was first introduced more than 30 years ago. It's original design objectives were modest, namely the exchange of plain text messages within a constrained, primarily technical community. From the start, the Internet E-mail system has been an architected system, based on the common usage of a core set of standards to achieve interoperability. However, that architecture has been defined component by component, interface by interface. As the the Internet E-Mail system has evolved to meet a broader set of objectives, the number of distinct components and interfaces has grown to the point where a more formalised architecture needs to be developed to define the "big picture".
The lack of this high level architectural view has become apparent during attempts to apply security to the existing e-mail infrastructure and to combat the tidal wave of unsolicited e-mail, namely Spam.
 Architecture in The Open Group
Architecture is one of the core themes around which the work of The Open Group is built. The Open Group Architecture Forum has developed The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) which establishes a Foundation Architecture which can be used for the development of specific architectures, together with resources to assist in the architecture development.
 Messaging Architectures
There is an ongoing activity within the IETF to develop a baseline architecture document describing how the Internet E-Mail system operates. The Messaging Forum adopted a version of that architecture as they baseline for its work.
A major focus of the work of the Forum has been to establish an architected approach to secure messaging. The Secure Messaging Challenge, demonstrated that it was possible to exchange encrypted e-mails between products from multiple vendors using standard interfaces. The approach adopted was documented in the Secure Messaging Toolkit which defined the components of the system and the interfaces between them, i.e. the architecture.
 S/MIME Secure Messaging Architecture
The S/MIME Secure Messaging Architecture pulls together previous work to define a coherent architecture for the design and deployment of secure messaging systems based on the S/MIME set of standards. It defines the components of a secure
messaging system and their relationships to
each other and to the environment in which they operate.
Messaging professionals who know and understand the content of this
architecture should be capable of designing and/or deploying a secure messaging
system based on the S/MIME set of standards.
The S/MIME Secure Messaging Architecture was developed to form the basis of the S/MIME Secure Messaging Certification program, to recognize organizations and individuals who have the necessary skills to design or deploy a secure messaging system.
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