The mail services provider has upgraded its e-mail protection and added optional groupware features to its Windows e-mail infrastructure.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [July 29, 2004]

Campbell, Calif.-based Windows e-mail infrastructure provider Rockliffe is branching out, adding additional features to its core messaging infrastructure.

John Davies, the company's president and CEO, says it's about putting the software on additional devices, but also giving customers the option of using no appliances at all. "In the past, we were focused on servers. Now we're moving into the e-mail gateway. But we also offer a hosted service where you're e-mail is routed through our e-mail gateway. It's designed to run in front of an e-mail server from any vendor, any ISP's e-mail server."

The company is pitching the product to service providers as a way to reduce bandwidth costs. "All the anti-spam and anti-virus processing is done off of the service provider's network," Davies notes.

A software version of the gateway is doing better with enterprise customers, who are more likely to be running Microsoft Exchange.

The company uses PureMessage from Abingdon, UK-based Sophos for anti-spam and has switched from Helsinki, Finland-based F-Secure to Moscow-based Kapersky for anti-virus.

The software provides protection from DoS attacks and directory harvesting, as well as other security features.

Join the team
Rockliffe also released MailSite Team, which, according to Davies, provides the sort of calendaring and scheduling features that were previously only available to Exchange server users.

However, he says Exchange server is not appropriate for service provider environments, whereas his company's product is. "Exchange is not viable. It lacks economies of scale. We have MailSite SP cluster, enabling economies of scale."

He admits that no service provider has yet bought the product, but says Rockliffe is negotiating some big deals.

Looking to the future
Rockliffe is busy working on several interesting projects. The company signed an agreement with Enigma Health, which is building portals for pharmacies that are part of the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

The company is integrating a message storage feature based on Microsoft SQL. Davies says, "e-mail archiving for legal compliance is an emerging market for us. We have good technology that will provide a good foundation for a product to address the needs of that market."

He notes that e-mail compliance requirements are constantly changing, so his company is playing close attention to customer requests. "We have some technology in our product today that can deliver part of the requirements, but we're working with our customers to refine the product."

Finally, the company will integrate compliance with the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) in the current quarter (Q3).

Pricing and availability
MailSite Message Protector is available now. Pricing starts at $595 for a small enterprise customer. An entry level price for a service provider package would be about $100,000 per year for 50,000 customers.

MailSite Team starts at $1,500 for a small enterprise customer. The price for a service provider package covering 50,000 end users would be about $200,000.

—End