Guest Columnist: Peter Zimmer of Infocrossing, Inc.
What Anti-Spam / Anti-Virus Service Providers Can Learn From the Cell Phone Industry
The messaging security market has grown rapidly, driven by increasing numbers of viruses, phishing schemes, denial of service attacks and unending spam. Many companies choose a managed service solution, because of relative ease in deployment and a controlled flat monthly fee per mailbox. However, it may be time for providers to rethink the all-you-can-eat pricing model. The problem is spam volume exponentially grows, which in turn drives up delivery costs that are forwarded onto customers. For providers, this means everincreasing delivery costs. For customers, this means a fixed fee per mailbox, regardless of actual consumption.
I believe we could learn a great deal from the cell phone industry in packaging services that provide fair usage-based pricing to price-conscious consumers. Providers could offer plans based on message volume vs. mailboxes. They could offer various packages that would include a monthly fee with pre-defined messaging volume, and a rate for volume above that. Customers with lower mail volume could save significantly.
Alternative plans could include premium services, such as allowing customers who need rapid delivery and advanced filtering, the opportunity to purchase this. Other customers could save money on lower priority networks or perhaps slower delivery times. Quarantines could be optional packages. Not all customers use email with the same priority as others, why should they pay equally for the growing delivery costs?
While the service provider industry is not likely to move in this direction soon, it is worth considering plans that cover costs, while offering customers cost-saving options. Beyond pricing, much can still be done in driving down costs in the first place while aligning processing with customers' email policies:
- Block more up front. First, we should focus on clearing known junk out of the equation. Today's IP reputation services, blacklists, and firewall technology enable providers to turn spam away at the door, rather than process those messages.
- Priority routing. Known good IP sources, such as customers' business partners can be identified and given a green light or priority up front.
- Policy-based management. A few providers are offering intelligent policy-based management tools that allow many permutations for message handling based on source, recipient, content, attachments, etc. These tools allow for variable filtering thresholds by user-plus the application of other business rules such as archiving, compliance, and encryption. Customers can align business requirements and security on the same delivery infrastructure, driving down over-all costs.
The bottom line is not all customers use email services equally. By re-thinking cost plans and better message handling, service providers can tackle the ever-growing source of email problems, while making costs more equitable by customer need. PZ/TMP