Messaging News - February 2009 - (Page 9)

Virtualized Environments by Stephanie Jordan t is generally accepted that interest in virtualization, which breaks the one-application-perserver model allowing one machine to perform multiple functions simultaneously, will continue to grow in 2009. When Osterman Research, Inc. conducted its Messaging Virtualization Market Trends, 20082011 research, it found reducing costs and improving disaster recovery/ business continuity were the primary reasons for deploying messaging virtualization. According to the report, “Other important reasons to deploy virtualization, cited by roughly three in five organizations as a driver or major driver include: optimizing the IT infrastructure to make it easier to add additional capacity to existing services and to reduce the cost of IT labor.” With its strong ROI appeal, virtualization is garnering a lot of attention. It is hard to predict, however, how fast adoption of virtual messaging will happen. As the Osterman report notes only 34 percent of those decision makers polled had a modest understanding of how virtualization could be used for email server applications. The report also states, “nearly two-thirds of IT decisionmakers are no more than modestly aware of the existence of commercial or open-source virtual appliances for s Grow I messaging functions.” There are, of course, messaging security vendors offering virtual solutions. For example, Proofpoint Inc., while it did not develop the first messaging security appliance for the virtual environment, was one of the first to not be open source. “Proofpoint got into the virtual market because we were using VMware in our own test environment,” reveals Keith R. Crosley, director of corporate communications for Proofpoint, Inc. “Every time you have a new build, it’s a hassle to install it on an actual physical appliance. As part of the QA process we started building virtual appliances to test because this really wasn’t about the hardware. It was about looking at the application layer for something that was eventually going to be deployed on a hardware appliance. Virtualization turned out to be a great way to deploy Proofpoint. We have definitely seen a lot of interest.” Like other messaging security vendors, Proofpoint started out by offering a software product and then introduced an appliance. “Very quickly most of our customer-base shifted to using the appliance product and really liked the plug and play hardened secure appliance,” explains Nithin Rao, senior product manager of Proofpoint, Inc. “What we were able to do with the virtual appliance was to give customers the best of the both. So basically you have a virtual appliance with all the benefits of security and the hardening of the appliance—the combined hardware/ software package—but it still gives the customer the flexibility to control their own infrastructure. At the same time, you are not committed to a box you have to rack and stack at your data center. The customer can control their infrastructure and better use their own infrastructure and get all the cost savings of having that type of control.” Vendors See Benefits Too Spam Titan, based in Ireland, started out in 2004 offering a gateway product, but found being a small company made for some challenges to selling a hardware appliance to their graphically disbursed customers. “The expense associated with delivering, deploying, selling and supporting hardware appliances over a large geographic area was very high,” recalls Ronan Kavanagh CEO of Spam Titan. “A typical example was if a company in the U.K. wanted to try a box, we would physically have to deliver and set up the box, and absorb the cost to do it. With the messaging security market space crowded, we found a similar experience with resellers in trying to messagingnews.com messagingnews.com 9 9 http://www.messagingnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Messaging News - February 2009

Messaging News - February 2009 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes Options Grow for Virtualized Environments Messaging Predictions for 2009 Moving Into the Cloud IBM Comes Out Swinging Next in Messaging News Learning to Do More with Less: An RSA Conference 2009 Preview “On Message” with Ben Gross The Web Has Shifted. Is Your Network Ready? Making the Case Learn More

Messaging News - February 2009

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