January 2006 — Networking
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E-mail Lockdown
Nifty, but Mirapoint’s R&D magic doesn’t end there. The company’s other flagship network appliance, known as the Mirapoint Message Server, is a full-blown replacement for traditional e-mail systems. Why make the switch? I’m glad you asked that question. The appliance design means customers can manage all MiraPoint software patches, up- grades, and security tweaks from a single user interface.
Got a Backup Plan?
Every effective security strategy also requires a contingency plan. If disaster strikes and your network infrastructure goes dark, your staff, faculty, and students won’t be able to communicate over e-mail.
To overcome this “doomsday” scenario, put in a call to MessageOne Inc. (www.messageone.com) of Austin, TX. The privately held company’s Emergency Mail System (EMS) protects more than one million e-mail mailboxes from network failures, personal sabotage, and acts of God. EMS is a highly scalable standby e-mail system that schools can activate when their primary e-mail systems fail. Instead of having to install EMS within your network infrastructure, the software and its related services are hosted in MessageOne’s own facilities. In a typical scenario, EMS is one-twentieth the cost of a traditional replication and mirroring solution, because it doesn’t require your school to purchase redundant licenses of your existing e-mail system.
Mirapoint says its e-mail systems offer 99.999% reliability. I was skeptical, until I spoke with more than a dozen Mirapoint customers. None had suffered a significant Mirapoint outage in the past year.
EMS, which I first stumbled across during a CIO teleconference in November, also offers clear security benefits. If a virus or worm attacks your primary e-mail system (say, Exchange, Notes, or GroupWise), EMS will remain unharmed because it’s based on Linux and doesn’t suffer from Windows-specific attacks.
Call a few customer references, and you’ll discover that the MessageOne and Mirapoint solutions are relatively easy to deploy, and less expensive than traditional e-mail environments. In MessageOne’s case, EMS typically costs $1 per user per month—quite a reasonable price for budget-conscious school districts that are seeking to safeguard their data communications.
Joseph C. Panettieri has covered Silicon Valley, business, and K-12 technology issues since 1992.
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