Messaging News - June 2008 - (Page 29)

Pros and Cons Fans of hosted and managed services feel it makes sense to hand over their headaches to vendors with the tools and technologies necessary to scale their services up or down to meet specific needs. In the case of business continuity, proponents say that their vendors provide them with multiple data centers operating concurrently, in addition to a full-time staff of experts—resources they could not possibly afford or employ on their own. Detractors argue that messaging is a critical functionality that belongs in-house. Citing internal management as less costly than a managed service and the data in question as too critical to be trusted to an off-site source, they feel costs inherent with maintaining and securing messaging functions will be driven lower over time. Osterman observes that many organizations are finding benefit in using a hybrid approach, in which some functions are handled using on-premise capabilities, while other functions are provided by a hosted or managed solution. Using a hosted perimeter email protection service, he says, can eliminate most spam before it ever hits the corporate network, eliminating much of the storage and bandwidth requirement for on-premise systems. Before deciding on a hosted/managed model, a complete in-house approach or a hybrid of the two, an organization must evaluate its existing in-house resources to determine whether they are equipped to handle increasing business, compliance, legal and security needs. MB/TMP Evaluation Criteria Recommendations EVault suggests organizations ask the following questions when evaluating hosted online backup solutions: 1) Is this a trusted, stable vendor with flexible delivery options to meet the needs as businesses change and grow? 2) Is this an easy to manage service with wide platform and application support for both physical and virtual environments? 3) Does the vendor offer end-to-end encryption and multiple secure Tier 3 or 4 SAS 70 Type II data centers? Concentric recommends considering four key areas when deciding on a hosted or managed service provider: 1) 2) 3) Reliability—This is the measure of the Web site and services uptime and resistance to down time due to hardware or other problems. Scalability—This is the ability to accommodate additional size or bandwidth needs and traffic spikes. Flexibility—This is the ability of the Web master or designer to add custom features and modules beyond those already supplied on the platform. This can include libraries written in PHP, Perl, or Python, as well as binary level shared libraries, CRON jobs, and special server configuration. Resistance to Account Abuse and Attacks—This is the ability to stay online regardless of abuse, whether from a co-hosting account, from outside attacks, or from co-hosted Web sites that are poorly designed or have sudden surges of traffic. 4) Opinion Barbara Branaman, president of Concentric believes that: Shared Hosting is weak in all four areas of critical importance—reliability, scalability, flexibility and resistance to account abuse and attack. She sees no strengths in any key area. Virtual Private Server (VPS) is weak in reliability, and resistance to account abuse and attack. While VPS can be strong in the area of scalability, Branaman feels flexibility is the strength of VPS. Managed/Dedicated Hosting is weak in reliability. It is mixed in scalability and resistance to account abuse and attack. Branaman believes managed is strong in the area of flexibility. Clustered, like Concentric Clustered Hosting, is strong in reliability, scalability and resistance to account abuse and attack. Branaman thinks it is mixed in flexibility (strong attributes are that the service provider invests in new features and applications and integrates advanced features for the entire platform; weaknesses are that it is more difficult to customize it at a library or binary level). MB/TMP FOR YOUR REFERENCE Concentric www.concentric.com EVault, Inc. www.evault.com Osterman Research, Inc. www.ostermanresearch.com messagingnews.com 29 http://www.concentric.com http://www.evault.com http://www.ostermanresearch.com http://www.messagingnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Messaging News - June 2008

Messaging News - June 2008 Editor’s Note Short Takes Classification & Retention Spam: Bigger, Faster, and More Dangerous Bad Behavior and Today’s Reputation Analysis The Changing Locus of Collaboration Serving Up Managed and Hosted Messaging Solutions “On Message” with Ben Gross SCAP Standard Benefits Both Government and Commercial Space Making the Case Learn More

Messaging News - June 2008

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