SaaS (Software as a Service)

Reliability and Security Must Be Decision Criteria for the Cloud

Michael Osterman — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:08:03 +0000

I have been following the cloud industry since the late 1990s, long before it was called the “cloud.” Way back then—and, for many, still to this day—the primary objections to the cloud focus on four primary issues when they compare it to on-premises systems: (a.) cost, (b.) the functionality and flexibility available for managing cloud-based systems, (c.) reliability/uptime, and (d.) security of content.

The response of cloud-based providers relative to a) and b) have been very good. Our own cost modeling demonstrates that the cloud can be (but is not always) less expensive than on-premises systems; and the features and functions for managing a cloud-based system, provisioning users, etc., is also clearly very good for most vendors.

However, (c.) and (d.) still have room for improvement. For example:

On May 10th, Microsoft BPOS had malformed email traffic problems that impacted some customers for between six and nine hours. It happened again two days later, with the problem lasting up to three hours for some customers. If we assume a customer was impacted for nine hours, that means the very best level of uptime that BPOS could have delivered for the month of May—assuming flawless performance for the balance of the month—was 98.79%.
During the afternoon of June 19th, Dropbox updated its software, resulting in the service’s authentication mechanism failing. For almost four hours, you could access any Dropbox account simply by typing a random combination of characters into the password field.

My point here is not to pick on either company—both provide excellent products and services that make our work experiences better, help us to communicate more quickly and generally make our work life more efficient. I value the contributions of both companies greatly.

That said, put yourself in the shoes of a CIO or an IT manager that is making a pitch for migrating corporate services to the cloud. When the CFO or CEO points out the problems noted above, what would you say? To be sure, you have the assurances from Microsoft and Dropbox, respectively, that “Office 365 should provide more stable service” and “…we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.” If you were the CIO or IT manager standing in front of your senior management, would you be comfortable with that as your defense If you were the CFO or the CEO, would that put your mind at ease?

I think what we need is a much heavier emphasis on the long-term reliability and security of cloud-based providers as the key competitive differentiators that will help us select from among them. I can visit a cloud provider’s Web site and quickly find the price of their service. However, data on their reliability (actual uptime over the past X months) or security (data from the independent lab that tested how secure their infrastructure and internal controls are) is not nearly as prevalent (although it is there for some providers), despite the fact that these parameters are much more important than their price for most decision makers.

As corporate and personal consumers of cloud services, we can vote for the most reliable and secure providers simply by asking about their performance on these parameters and using the best ones we find.

We should do just that.

The Non-IT Cost Implications of the Cloud

Michael Osterman — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:55:20 +0000

Much has been made of the impact of the cloud on IT, but what about the impact that cloud-based communications and other applications could have on non-IT expenditures? Here are a couple of back-of-the-envelope calculations to consider:

An employee who makes $60,000 per year, works 245 days per year, has the US average commute length of 32-miles (round trip) each day, has a car that gets the US average of 22.6 miles per gallon and pays the US average of $3.814 per gallon of gasoline (as of May 25, 2011), will spend $1,323 on gasoline every year; add in the cost of oil and tires, and the total commute cost per employee is $1,457 per year, or about $121 per month. If each employee could work from home two days per week because he or she had cloud-based applications that enabled them to work remotely with the same efficiency they experienced in the office, his or her savings would be $583 per year, or the equivalent of a 0.97% salary increase. Working from home three days per week would increase the savings to $874 per year—equivalent to a salary increase of 1.46%.
Office space that leases for $18.05 per square foot per year (the current average for downtown Atlanta) and provides an average of 175 square feet per employee will cost a 200-employee company $631,750 per year, or $3,159 per employee. If that company’s employees averaged two days per week working from home (again, assuming the availability of robust cloud-based communications and other applications that enabled them to do so), the office space required by this company would need to accommodate only 120 employees at an annual cost of $379,050, or a savings of $252,700 per year.

So, companies that allow employees to work from home two days per week and provide them with access to good cloud-based communications and applications would save employees $116,554 per year in commute costs, and would save themselves $252,700 per year in real estate costs. This translates to total savings of $369,254 annually, or $1,846 per employee per year, or $154 per employee per month—all for an investment of no more than about $15–20 per month for cloud-based services. This does not include companies’ power savings (which would be mostly transferred to employees working from home) and other, less tangible, benefits like happier employees.

The implications of this are not only significant cost savings, but also the ability to justify much higher expenditures for cloud-based services that offer extraordinary Service Level Agreements, additional features or other benefits.

Your thoughts?

Behold the Cloud Foundry!

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:57:35 +0000

As I always say, I am absolutely fascinated with the Cloud—or more precisely, the faith that has been put into something that doesn’t actually exist. I love that! The whole thing makes me feel like I did when a Gartner analyst tried to explain Quantum Cryptography to me. I was starry-eyed!

We could have a year’s worth of conversations about whether or not the Cloud is a separate magical entity that enables businesses to vanquish their enemies OR whether it’s a vast collection of off-site services, people, platforms, and apps. But that wouldn’t be fun and who knows what it will bring you for Christmas?!

Anyway I digress.

To shake things up a bit, VMware has introduced the industry’s first open platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to foster the development of software applications for Cloud-computing environments. Called Cloud Foundry, the platform’s goal is to shorten the time it takes for software developers to take their applications from concept to code and to the Cloud. I want to pause here and reflect on that sentence for a second because I cannot be the only one that worries about how a quicker time-to-Cloud introduces possible messy and unproven code. What’s in place for Cloud quality control? Who is beta-testing the Cloud? I’m sure VMware has already thought of this but I do need to follow up. I can scarcely stand thinking about my Cloud being vulnerable to human error.

On the Cloud Foundry web site, it is described as an open platform as a service project that can support multiple frameworks, multiple Cloud providers, and multiple application services all on a Cloud scale platform. (If something is “Cloud-scale” isn’t it really infinite?). Its primary objectives, as stated on the site, are to foster:

Developer Productivity—Build applications with your choice of high productivity frameworks and application services.
Open System—Choose your framework, choose your Cloud, choose your application services.
Faster Delivery—Shorten the time it takes to take your application from concept, to code, to the cloud using an open platform as a service.

Based on technology originally developed by SpringSource, acquired by VMware in 2009, Cloud Foundry was launched gives software developers a broad choice of frameworks, app infrastructure services, and deployment options. Moreover, the platform isn’t tied to any Cloud environment, nor does it require a VMware infrastructure.

Instead, VMware says that Cloud Foundry is being delivered as a service from enterprise data centers and public Cloud providers.

“VMware is finally ready to put the platform out in the hands of developers to play with and will release the entire stack in open source for anyone to leverage,” said Al Hilwa, director of applications development software at IDC.

Support for Multiple Application Services

“In the initial release, Spring for Java, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby, and Node.js are supported,” wrote VMware Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod in a recent blog entry. “The system also supports other Java-virtual-machine-based frameworks such as Grails.”

Herrod explains that Cloud Foundry was designed to support a wide variety of application services because there simply is no single solution that meets all application requirements.

Cloud Foundry currently supports MySQL, MongoDB and Redis but Herrod says that they are working on adding support for other application services.

Herrod also says that Cloud Foundry is capable of running on top of VMware’s current vSphere and vCloud infrastructure, as well as other infrastructure clouds. He points to VMware partner RightScale, who recently demonstrated that Cloud Foundry can be deployed on top of Amazon Web Services.

Avaya Dev and Tech Partner Program Helps Improve Collaboration for SMEs Across Industries

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:12:00 +0000

Avaya, maker of business collaboration systems, software and services, today announced an array of application development partners working to drive new and innovative capabilities for Avaya IP Office, the company’s flagship communications solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). These partners are part of Avaya’s new DevConnect program, an initiative to promote the creation of a new generation of solutions complementary to unified communications (UC) by integrating products, services and technologies with Avaya solutions.

Avaya DevConnect provides a wide range of developer-oriented resources, including access to application program interfaces, developer tools, and technical support. The company says its membership has grown by over 16 percent in the last year and that there are over 1,400 Avaya compliance tested solutions, with 30 to 40 new solutions being added each month. For the small business arena, there are more than 300 tested solutions from DevConnect members across all Avaya SME communications platforms.

Many Avaya DevConnect partners develop solutions for the SME market, in an effort to help those businesses using Avaya IP Office and Business Communications Manager compete at the same level as large enterprises. These partners develop capabilities tested for interoperability with Avaya SME products, and also help enhance them. Applications that have recently been introduced for Avaya IP Office from partners include:

Presence Tailored to the Small Business: AdvaTel has developed InTouch, a second generation UC application that brings together internal presence and federated presence to all of one’s external contacts via Yahoo!, Skype, MSN Lync and Outlook calendar. The solution, which does not require a server, lets users move between voice telephony, instant messaging (IM), SMS and email with just one click.
Hospitality Applications Enhance Guest Service for Hotels: The DuVoice DV2000 is a messaging system and Property Management System (PMS) interface for Avaya IP Office that is suited for hotels. DV2000 capabilities include everything from voicemail and wake-up call management to enabling employees to handle mini-bar inventories via phone. DuVoice also provides 911 features for Avaya IP Office that alert the front desk when emergency calls are made and pinpoint the location of the room requiring help.
Resource Software International Ltd. (RSI) provides call accounting software—Shadow CMS Enterprise—which performs telecom billing functions and interfaces with a hotel’s Property Management System (PMS). The company interoperates with Avaya IP Office, providing a fully-scalable UC management solution that lets administrators forecast, monitor and allocate communications management expenses. Hotel-centric features include the ability for cleaning staff to enter the status of a room’s condition using a phone, wake up calls, emergency notification and features for deploying messages, menus or advertisements to phone sets.
SIP Capabilities Bring New Value to SMEs: Optimum Voice SIP Trunking from Cablevision’s Optimum Business was designed to deliver high-quality, reliable voice service to SMBs through a converged voice and data network that can scale as needed for up to 100 employees. This capability lets businesses use all of Avaya IP Office’s state-of-the-art features, while it improves the quality and reliability of voice services, simplifies configuration, reduces equipment costs, and provides significant room for scalability at about half the cost of traditional T1 solutions.
Automated Applications Simplify Processes: Computer Instruments offers e-IVR, which contains the components that allow companies, schools, churches and others to reach out to constituents automatically to remind them of appointments, inform them of school cancellations, and alert them of emergencies. These messages may be sent via phone, email or text by seamlessly integrating with Avaya IP Office. Inbound functions allow callers to find out about homework that is due, renew a prescription, or pay their utility bill—via speech recognition or phone prompts.
The combination of Computer Instruments’ e-IVR vertical team and Avaya IP Office helps many organizations simplify how people get information out. The company enhances Avaya IP Office with self-service applications for weather alerts, hospital lab results, or last minute searches for substitute teachers. In education, an absentee application lets teachers use a phone to mark students present, and if someone is absent, a message goes to parents via email, phone or text message.

In Search of the Great Cloud

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 01:56:41 +0000

I have a fondness for the Cloud. Not the actuality of it, but the idea of it. The vagueness of it and the subsequent myriad of definitions for it, amaze me. Not since the World Wide Web became Web 2.0 have there been so many definitions for a thing no one really understands but seems to agree is real. Kind of like Santa. I love that we can wholeheartedly believe in something we cannot see, feel, or touch. We have faith in the great all-knowing Cloud.

At the RSA 2009 conference the concept of the Cloud had not yet fully crystallized in our collective consciousness. It was out there, hanging around with the likes of quantum cryptography and unicorns, but it hadn’t caught fire as a business model or term du jour. I asked a popular security analyst what his definition of the Cloud was and he said, “I don’t really know but I suppose it’s really a big group of servers that store your information off-site.” Just like that. Not very sexy if you ask me. The Cloud was unmasked in my mind as an imposter, much like the Great Oz behind the curtain. It’s all an illusion, your data does not live in the sky with the god that you may or may not believe in. It does not exist on the wings of fairies. It lives elsewhere, on servers, virtual or physical. This, in its purest essence, should frighten you. I mean really, do you know where your data is?

In my personal quest for understanding the great Cloud I found this very interesting December 2008 entry in John Willis’ IT blog on the coining of the phrase, “Cloud Computing”:

Chris Sears, one of Atlanta’s finer cloud enthusiasts has earned some battle scars on the forums discussing the topic of “Cloud Computing.” I remember him once telling me that he had done some research on the original sighting of the phrase “Cloud Computing.” So this afternoon when I posted a tweet asking the titled question he sent the following response:

“As for the origin of the term “cloud computing”, there are a few possibilities…

In May 1997, NetCentric tried to trademark the “cloud computing” but later abandoned it in April 1999. Patent serial number 75291765.

In April 2001, the New York Times ran an article by John Markoff about Dave Winer’s negative reaction to Microsoft’s then new .Net services platform called Hailstorm (if you want a laugh sometime, ask a Microsoft Azure person about Hailstorm). It used the phrase “cloud’ of computers”.

My personal pick is in August 2006, where Eric Schmidt of Google described their approach to SaaS as cloud computing at a search engine conference. I think this was the first high profile usage of the term, where not just “cloud” but “cloud computing” was used to refer to SaaS and since it was in the context Google, the term picked up the PaaS/IaaS connotations associated with the Google way of managing data centers and infrastructure.

Much like “Web 2.0″, cloud computing was a collection of related concepts that people recognized, but didn’t really have a good descriptor for, a definition in search of a term, you could say. When Google’s Schmidt used it in 2006 to describe their own stuff and then Amazon included the word “cloud” in EC2 when it was launched a few weeks later (August 24), the term became mainstream. People couldn’t definite it exactly, but they roughly knew it meant SaaS apps and infrastructure like Google was doing and S3/EC2 services like Amazon was offering.”

So it would seem that quite possibly Google is to blame (or thank?) for the Cloud. Since we can’t really proclaim our continued belief in Santa, we had to have something don’t you think?

Can Data Be More Secure in the Cloud?

Stephanie Jordan — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 23:31:09 +0000

There’s no reason data stored in the cloud can’t be more secure and reliable than data stored on-premises. To make this happen, consider four key factors: operational expertise, controlled environments, encryption architectures and redundant infrastructure.

All key factors can be done on-premises, but that can be expensive and difficult, especially for processes that are not core to a business. By core, I’m referring to something that differentiates a company in the eyes of customers, such as the type of products a company provides. Everything else is context, which is important, but doesn’t impact business in the same way.

By moving context functions to the cloud, organizations can reduce costs and redirect those savings to core functions.

Operational Expertise

Security features must be planned for and built into every part of the solution, even for components that aren’t core to a customer’s needs. For example, by owning most components of the SaaS technology stack, an organization can leverage secure software development lifecycles to ensure that security best practices are accounted for in core software, tools, processes and monitoring systems.

A cloud solution also needs dedicated staff for monitoring, security, architecture, platform development, compliance and engineering. Having a dedicated and specialized staff both ensure expertise, and also increase security, because vulnerabilities often happen when technology is implemented without the right level of proficiency.

A cloud solution should also ensure, through continuous validation and auditing, that the right things are being done through a variety of mechanisms, whether those are SAS 70 Type II audits, internal audits, or security probes.

Additionally, cloud services need to operate at scale for specific applications not found in a typical enterprise, which in turn creates a need for automation, ensuring that all the right tasks are happening at the right times.

Controlled Environments

A SaaS solution needs a scalable environment made for performing one task (or set of tasks) in an automated, repeatable, and dependable way. Therefore, cloud providers need a homogenous environment from an OS monitoring tool and even hardware point-of-view in order to increase visibility and decrease risk exposure.

In this environment, there’s not one key person who has access to everything. Instead, there are strict controls regarding when and who can do what, which should be automated to provide an additional level of security.

Data Encryption Architecture

Enterprise-class cloud vendors must ensure that data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, no matter where it resides. Crucial to this are encryption keys, which should be separated from the data or application. One way is to have data in the cloud and keys onsite. Alternatively there could be one cloud where keys are maintained and stored and a separate cloud for data encryption and decryption. Those clouds should communicate through controlled protocols so unauthorized users can’t access both.

Redundant Infrastructure

To deliver services reliably, across multiple datacenters and at scale, cloud solutions need redundant infrastructure. To ensure reliability and disaster recovery, it should be at the core of all architecture.

Redundancy is often overlooked because it is complex, not always cost-effective, and many times it’s an afterthought. But it provides additional security. If attackers target one datacenter, other datacenters are still running.

If an organization looks for SaaS solutions that hit on all of these four factors, they can rest assured that their data will be secure and reliable, even in the cloud.

—

About Andrés Kohn

Andrés Kohn is currently responsible for Proofpoint’s email archiving business unit and has been responsible for setting Proofpoint’s product direction since the inception of the company. In addition, Andrés is responsible for developing strategic technology partnerships that complement Proofpoint’s solution offerings. He joined Proofpoint from Critical Path, where he was director of product management and responsible for the global direction of their messaging products and services. Before joining Critical Path, Andrés held several product marketing positions at PeopleSoft, and various management roles at International Paper as well as Procter and Gamble. Andrés holds a B.S. degree with distinction and an M.S. degree in engineering from Cornell University. He also holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University.

Some Findings from Our SaaS Research

Michael Osterman — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 22:16:49 +0000

Osterman Research has just published a major new study on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) messaging market in North America. Here are some of our findings and conclusions:

The ability to migrate data to a SaaS provider—such as existing email data that must be migrated into a SaaS archiving vendor’s archive, or existing mailbox content that must be migrated to a SaaS email provider’s data center—is a sore point for many decision makers. Given that 16% of decision makers have little or no confidence that they could migrate all of their internal data successfully to a SaaS provider, and that twice that many lack confidence that they could bring all of their data back in-house, this is a major issue that SaaS provider across the board will need to address. The latter point is particularly telling, since it implies that a large proportion of the prospective customer base for SaaS providers fears being locked into a particular vendor and/or the SaaS delivery model. This will make many decision makers reluctant even to consider SaaS until these concerns can be successfully overcome.
Osterman Research firmly believes that the SaaS model will be particularly successful across a wide range of messaging- and Web-related technology areas. In the mid-sized and enterprise market, we believe that one of the primary deployment models will be as hybrid systems, in which SaaS is used as a supplement to on-premise systems, particularly in security-focused areas. For example, the use of SaaS anti-virus, anti-spam and Web security can be an excellent pre-filter for on-premise systems, allowing the cloud to absorb spam storm and spikes in malware, and to eliminate much of the content that would otherwise have to be processed on-premise. A key value proposition for SaaS, particularly among larger organizations, will be to extend the life of on-premise infrastructure, reduce the cost of upgrading this infrastructure to accommodate new security requirements, and to reduce overall bandwidth requirements.
There are a number of issues about which decision makers are more concerned today than they were 12 months ago, but the most critical issues are focused on managing and securing mobile devices, finding enough IT staff to manage the infrastructure, and the need to archive email. An important point to note from our research is that even during the slow economic recovery during which this report was written, more than one-quarter of decision makers are more concerned about having enough IT staff available than they were in 2009. This is a particularly important point for SaaS providers to consider, since this is in large part their raison d’être—alleviating their customers of the need to use internal staff to manage IT infrastructure.

Getting Started with Social Media Management

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:48:34 +0000

This week Osterman Research, FaceTime Communications, and Smarsh conducted the webinar, The Case for Social Media Management and Archiving. The session did a good job of explaining why organizations should be managing the use of social media. This is a topic of growing interest, as more and more legal cases are determining that social networking content is discoverable. In the financial services industry, FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 declares that financial services firms must retain relevant social networking posts, just like they retain email and instant messaging.

During the webinar, a discussion point was how an organization that does not manage the use of social media begins its efforts to do so. Studying and understanding how and why social networking is being used is a good first step. Norv Leong, product marketing manager of FaceTime, advocates starting with the policy. He notes that more and more courts are extending the law of electronic devices to include just about everything, including social media content. “You have to make sure that all your employees know about the policy. It does no good to have a policy, if no one knows about it,” he says. Leong adds that just as important is enforcing the policy and to give it “some teeth, otherwise it will be rendered meaningless. Embracing social media, establishing a policy, disseminating it, and enforcing the policy, is the best way to start.”

Sam Kolbert-Hyle, VP business development of Smarsh, agrees with Leong, adding: “I would stress a reasonably designed policy. Especially if you are a FINRA or FCC regulated firm or you are a government agency, or someone who is thinking about the risks and compliance benefits of archiving and retaining social media. Having a reasonably designed policy is really paramount. It has to be designed in a way that takes into consideration your micro corporate culture or environment, as well as some of trends in the macro market place.”

With the popularity of social media climbing, there are more tools ready to help manage it, including technology for monitoring and controlling, and ready-made policies. “If you need a little guidance in coming up with your own policy, increasingly it is easier and easier to access social media policies online,” states Leong.

The main point both speakers stressed is the policy is only as good as the training and sharing of that policy with employees. The policy needs to be disseminated across the entire organization. Ensuring that employees are aware of the policy is a critical step in getting started with managing social media. Once you have the policy, then you can look for the right technology to support the policy objectives and help monitor content as deemed necessary.

If you missed the live event, look for the re-broadcast.

Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Why China’s Economy and Gold Prices Explain Some of the Cloud’s Appeal

Michael Osterman — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:42:05 +0000

China’s economy, by just about any measure, is doing extremely well even in its current “downturn”: China’s gross domestic product is expected to grow by roughly 10% this year compared with growth in the US GDP that will be approximately 2.5%.

Gold prices have reached record highs, up to $1,309 per ounce as of this writing, an increase of about 30% from a year ago.

Adoption of messaging-focused cloud computing is increasing at a rapid pace, as are the fortunes of cloud-focused vendors. For example, Sonian’s customer base increased by 107% during the first nine months of this year, the annual growth rate for LiveOffice’s Personal Archive offering was 177% for Q2/2010, ZixCorp’s revenue for Q2/2010 increased by 21% over the same period in 2009, and Rackspace’s cloud hosting revenue doubled in 2009, to name just a few of the many successful cloud-focused vendors.

I believe the common thread between these phenomena is stability. China—which embraces both capitalism and totalitarian control—provides more stability in its long-term investment outlook than many other nations. Gold offers more stability and more certainty than the US dollar, the Euro and many other investments and so has become a haven of sorts for those seeking stability, at least in the near term. Similarly, while the cloud offers a number of important technical benefits, one of its chief advantages is the stability and certainty that it offers to organizations. For example, cloud providers typically offer a minimum one-year contract, meaning that prices for IT services like email, security, encryption, archiving, etc. can be very predictable over the near- to mid-term. Vendors like Google and AppRiver offer unlimited storage in their archiving and hosted Exchange offerings, respectively, eliminating potential requirements to add storage as demand increases. Leading cloud providers offer redundancy in their infrastructure and so can eliminate much of the uncertainty that can arise from power outages and natural disasters. Cloud-based archiving, email and storage vendors will migrate customer content to newer data formats over time, eliminating the uncertainty that can come from storing data in formats that may become obsolete in five or ten years.

In short, a key benefit of the cloud is its stability: the ability to predict the cost per seat for a variety of services for a year or more at a time, the ability to better predict storage requirements over the near- to mid-term, and the ability to more reliably future-proof data retrieval over the long term.

Your thoughts?

St. Bernard Software Acquires Red Condor

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:07:42 +0000

On the heels of last week’s news that Red Condor had scored the highest in an independent third-party test, comes an announcement from St. Bernard Software, Inc. that it has acquired the company. St. Bernard, a provider of Web security appliances targeting the SME market, says the acquisition of Red Condor’s managed security solutions is “a natural extension” of its product and business strategy.

“This acquisition milestone is a truly exciting time for both St. Bernard and Red Condor, as it creates great opportunities for growth with our shared hybrid security vision,” says Lou Ryan, president and CEO at St. Bernard. “The strategic match we have found in Red Condor establishes greater breadth and depth in our hosted, hybrid and on-premises options, and increases the overall value to our customers and partners.”

Recently, Red Condor’s hosted and hybrid email spam filtering solutions outperformed competitive spam filters in an independent test of email filter accuracy conducted by Miercom. According to Rob Smithers, CEO of Miercom, “Red Condor had the lowest misclassification rate of all appliance and SaaS solutions tested, and its hybrid solution affords a comprehensive approach to filtering, blocking and classifying emails.” He went on to state that Red Condor has one of the best email security solutions on the market.

Test criteria in the Miercom evaluation included spam block rates, false-positive and false-negative counts and misclassification rates – number of false negatives (missed spam) combined with the number of false positives (legitimate messages incorrectly quarantined). The results gave Red Condor the highest block rate, zero false-positives and only one misclassified message for every 1,970 messages received during the one-week test.

The acquisition announcement states that the Web security market is expected to grow to $2.3 billion (USD) by 2012, and that the protection of leading applications, such as email and messaging, remains a primary concern across global enterprises of all sizes. Red Condor, founded six years ago, brings St. Bernard over 1,900 new customers, as well as its ISP and MSP partner network.

Businesses Using Email Service Providers Likely to Switch Within 24 Months, Plan to Integrate Social Media

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:13:59 +0000

A recent survey of businesses that use an email service provider (ESP) reveals that a majority (77 percent) have changed providers within the last two years. The main reasons for switching: lack of product features, limited services and high costs.

In addition, another third plan to switch in the next 12 months – expressing a lack of product features as the top reason, but adding data integration and deliverability as the other key reasons for planning to switch.

According to the survey analysis:

“Deliverability as a reason to change ESPs is also underscored by 67 percent of companies using an ESP’s deliverability services, making it the most popular ESP service offering by nearly a factor of three. Execution (21 percent) and production services (19 percent) round out the top three services offered by ESPs.”

The survey also says businesses are continuing to look for ways to adopt social media. Not surprising, the survey found that 71 percent of companies have either integrated email and social media or plan to in 2010. Businesses’ top objectives, according to the survey, is to promote corporate presence on social networks (71 percent) and make email content shareable, 63 percent indicate a growth opportunity for more sophisticated social media tactics like viral marketing campaigns (48 percent) and user-generated content (35 percent).

Zoomerang conducted the 2010 Email Marketing Survey of more than a 1,000 global businesses online for StrongMail, a provider of online marketing solutions for email and social media.

New Managed File Transfer Option: Sendable

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:53:03 +0000

Moving files can be risky. But as the awareness of what could befall a file in transit grows, so does the list of products available to businesses and individuals to mitigate that risk. This week Ipswitch, Inc. launches one of the latest: Sendable, a file sending solution for individuals and prosumers.

According to Ipswitch, nearly 90 percent of respondents to a recent survey use external devices to move work-related files — which can pose a security risk to organizations and individuals.

While managed file transfer (MFT) has been around for a while, not everyone has been quick to embrace the available technology. “People who don’t have a managed file transfer platform simply can’t afford the hefty price tag on other file transfer solutions,” believes Gary Shottes, president of Ipswitch File Transfer. “Whether you need security around sensitive files, visibility into files sent, received, opened and shared, or just a hassle-free way to send large files, Sendable makes it possible at a very affordable price.”

Overall, adoption of MFT technology is growing as companies of all sizes are realizing that USB flash drives, removable disk drives and cell phones can easily move sensitive, large files. Small- to medium-sized companies to the enterprise are turning to MFT for moving internal and external files, especially as compliance requirements spread beyond specific industries.

Sendable is cloud-based, and can transfer files up to 15GB. File delivery tracking offers email notification when files are received, downloaded and opened. Sensitive information is secured with end-to-end encryption, and password protection. In addition, senders can control the number of times a file may be downloaded.

Sendable is available immediately.

Ipswitch Acquires MessageWay

Michael Osterman — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:20:08 +0000

Yesterday, Ipswitch announced the acquisition of MessageWay, a managed file transfer (MFT) company based in Livonia, Michigan. Ipswitch has offered file transfer solutions for many years and was named by Gartner as a leader in the company’s Magic Quadrant for Managed File Transfer in September 2009. The company has clearly boosted its position in the MFT space with this acquisition given that MessageWay’s MFT solutions are designed for high volume file transfer applications in the large enterprise (Global 2000) and service provider markets.

Why is MFT important? Among the many reasons are two key ones: first, while many users focus on email as a transport mechanism for business-critical content, the fact is that the vast majority of B2B content is actually sent using file-transfer systems, not email, including a large and growing number of application-to-application and application-to-human transfers. This means that many organizations are relying on FTP or other systems that may not provide the throughput or performance they need. Second, the consequences of data breaches can be enormous, reaching millions of dollars for a single data breach. Many existing file transfer systems simply are not capable of providing the appropriate level of security for B2B content transfer.

While MFT is often about changing existing processes to make them more efficient or less costly, these system can also create new revenue opportunities, as well.

Is Google Docs a failure?

Michael Osterman — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:22:36 +0000

While Osterman Research competes with Forrester (much like a BB gun competes with a Howitzer), I have great respect for the company and its analysts. However, I respectfully disagree with a Forrester blog post published today that “Google Docs remains a failure – so far anyway”. The gist of the article is that because only 4% of US consumers who are online indicate that they regularly use Google Docs, and because Microsoft Office completely dominates the application space, Docs is, as yet, a failure in the consumer space.

Clearly no disagreement with the assertion that Microsoft dominates the application suite market, but here’s why I disagree with the basic focus of the post:

The consumer space is really not the bellwether for success in the application suite market. The majority of people who use Microsoft Office legally (the only market that really counts) do so at work – because of Microsoft’s very useful policy of allowing the primary user of Office to also install the software on his or her laptop for their exclusive use, many “consumers” are actually work users who use the suite at home. Of course, there are many who illegally copy Office and use it at home, but they’re clearly not a market for purchasing software that they can easily steal anyway.
An IDC report published in September 2009 found that roughly 20% of businesses currently use Google Docs, a significant increase from just 5% in 2007.
Google Docs is an integral component of Google Apps that has, conservatively, nearly two million users, including some large organizations like Konica Minolta, Genentech, the City of Los Angeles, the government of Washington DC, Avago Technologies, Yale University and Motorola.

Just like it would be inaccurate to characterize Apple as a failure because the Mac has very little market share in the business space, I don’t believe it’s fair to characterize Google Docs as a “failure” given that it has only 4% of the consumer market. Plus, there are a variety of interesting and useful features available in Google Docs – like storage for 250-megabyte files and the ability to print directly to HP printers – that are quite innovative and useful.

Will Office 2010 be a success in both the packaged software market and in the cloud space? I believe it definitely will be. Will Google Docs be a success in the cloud space, as well? Ditto.

Free Calendaring and Conferencing Service For Small Business

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:11:31 +0000

Next week a new service for group calling will be announced. StreetSmart Meeting, from InfoStreet Inc., offers free calendaring and conferencing, including permanent conference call numbers.

A calendar tool generates invitations to the call, as well as reminders. The service also offers call recording and stored playback for up to 90 days.

“InfoStreet has dedicated itself to small business success by providing world class software solutions at unheard of levels of affordability,” says Siamak Farah, founder and CEO of InfoStreet Inc. “StreetSmart Meeting was a natural extension for us, allowing us to extend our offering, in this case a totally free consumer and small business service, to a wider market, and by so doing, educate a new group of consumers on the benefits of Web-delivered productivity software.”

The company offers these service highlights:

Users can schedule, manage and host conference calls at any time.
Instant activation.
Conference participants can join the call using a landline or a cell phone.
Users have a dedicated dial-in number and access codes.
Or users can create multiple one-time conference call bridge number and access code on the fly. This allow users to host multiple conferences simultaneously.
Joining a meeting is as easy as dialing the phone number and punching in the access code.
There are no time limits on conference calls and users can have as many as 150 people on the line.
Email invites provide user’s attendees with all of the information they need to join the conference call, and the invite can be added to Outlook.

The new service is part of InfoStreet’s SaaS platform, StreetSmart, that includes: virus and spam protected email, email archiving, calendar, tasks, CRM, file sharing, knowledge base, mailing lists, portal, and Web site publishing. Your phone company standard rates apply to the calls.