Messaging News - December 2008 - (Page 14) SaaS is true,” acknowledges Roberto. “We designed our system to be built for the SaaS platform right from the beginning, and we have dealt with all of the aspects relative to security. We are not a converted platform. It is not unusual for someone who is not familiar with technology like ours to have questions around security in the SaaS model, but we have addressed anything that would be a concern to a client. So we can make them very comfortable by explaining our technology approach and ensure their data is absolutely secure and protected.” SaaS providers seem to understand well the role they play in their customer’s businesses. “Absolutely,” Briceno goes on to say, “the partner members of the PGP MSPN program provide our SaaS customers with the same award-winning encryption security solutions that enterprise customers can license from PGP Corporation directly. SaaS customers that start out with a SaaS deployment may choose to later migrate the applications and management infrastructure in-house without re-deployment or downtime. The information exchanged between the customer and MSP is encrypted using our award-winning encryption products.” Concerns, beyond trust, can vary by SaaS provider and the technology that’s being offered. Commonly cited are security and interoperability. of users, so if material information is blocked in the queue, users can catch it and retrieve it in real-time. Once Adams brought this up, Mimecast adapted its reporting structures. “I rely on all my vendors to respond quickly to my needs. Ease of use is paramount. Bar none, Mimecast support has been tremendous,” exclaims Adams. SaaS Appeal Michael Osterman, principle analyst of Osterman Research mentioned earlier this year that messaging could be likened to a utility service saying, “you do not generate your own electricity, why then manage your own messaging?” Eades tends to agree with Osterman, saying, “Same applies “End-user customers of the PGP MSPN program gain costeffective access to enterprise-strength encryption technology without infrastructure, datacenter and helpdesk investments. Customers have access to quick and easy deployments with a pay-as-you-go model with no annual commitments.” —Marc Briceno, PGP Corporation says Eades. “We go after this from multiple angles: we highlight our successful 10-year history of providing critical messaging solutions; we provide live phone support from 5am to 5pm for all customers, as well as 24x7 support for higher tiers; we offer live salespeople; no purchase obligation periods; customer education and thousands of customer references.” Confidence in the SaaS provider is perhaps more important than any of the benefits listed thus far. “PGP Corporation vets the members of the PGP MSPN program from our existing pool of long-time partners,” explains Briceno. “Only partners that meet our expectations in product knowledge, experience, and qualityof-service are accepted into the PGP MSPN program. To date, 94 percent of the Fortune 100, 68 percent of the FTSE 100 Index (UK) and 93 percent of the DAX 30 Index (Germany) have chosen to trust PGP Corporation with their security needs, be that for in-house or SaaS deployments.” 14 According to Eades, for interoperability Everyone.net “provides Web services and an API structure that allows us to integrate with applications, and billing and provisioning systems.” He also says, “Security is a key differentiator for Everyone.net. Leveraging security management and control in the cloud creates a more protected SMB.” As SaaS providers become an extension of their customer’s businesses, a team approach is the reward. Following the selection of Mimecast’s service, Adams discovered another added value – a responsive support team. Mimecast’s customer case study offers this example: Adams had been accustomed to getting an email summary of the spam that was blocked each day. Since email is considered as documentation in discovery, the control of email in the queue is critical. The audit trail has to be scrubbed clean in order for email to be useful as evidence, which means that some mail is blocked. A daily digest brings this list to the attention over time to other areas, such as email archiving, online file storage, security posture and other business services.” Briceno responds, saying, “PGP Corporation offers encryption solutions for both in-house and externally-hosted email messaging systems. We are seeing a modest uptake in externally-hosted email services at the low end of SMB, in particular small professional offices. Large enterprise customers in many cases have long outsourced their messaging and other computing infrastructure to systems integrators such as IBM Global Services and our partner ACS. From the perspective of the enterprise, the systems integrator acts as the utility providing messaging services albeit the systems are located in-house. We are not yet seeing larger SMB customers or enterprises trending towards externally-hosted mailbox services.” While SaaS is attractive to many, Eades concedes that it “may not be MESSAGING NEWS DECEMBER 2008 http://www.Everyone.net http://www.Everyone.net
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