The company's latest product could completely disrupt pricing in a very specific segment of the mobile business.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [June 16, 2008]

Campbell Calif.-based software maker MailSite is announcing today the release of BackBerry ActiveSync, building on last week's release of MailSite Fusion 9. MailSite's pricing pitch is all about server consolidation and reducing license fees.

John Davies, MailSite's Chairman, founder, president, and CEO, says that the product consolidates three servers into one. Just as MailSite Fusion 9 consolidates a messaging server, mobile server, and security server into one MailSite server, the MailSite BlackBerry ActiveSync client allows a small business to eliminate licenses on both the Exchange Server and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). MailSite also replaces a security (anti-virus and anti-spam) server.

Do all of this and you're not running BlackBerry anymore. Instead, you're running an Exchange Replacement (MailSite Fusion 9) on BlackBerry, using BlackBerry's Java operating system.

Is it legal? Have you been working with BlackBerry on this? "We're not sure what their position is going to be," says Davies.

Once other companies see what you've done, will they be able to replicate it? How easy is it to do this? "We've been working on this for over a year. The first challenge was to understand the (Microsoft) ActiveSync protoocol. Then we had to figure out how to incorporate it into the BlackBerry."

That must have taken a lot of reverse engineering. "Yes."

The result: disruptive pricing. Davies says that a company offering hosted Exchange plus hosted BES could charge a small business $10 per user per month. That's $120 per user per year. MailSite's ActiveSync Client for the BlackBerry retails at $49 per user per year and sells to ISPs for $36 per user per year (ISPs can then pocket the markup or offer discounted service to customers).

"With this software product, the end user no longer needs to buy BES from their hosting provider," says Davies. That's certainly a big change in the "crackberry" market.

Pricing and availability
MailSite Fusion 9 was released last week by MailSite, starting at $5,000 for a one year license for 500 users, with the per user price declining at higher volumes. The security server functionality, anti-spam and anti-virus, costs extra.

The BlackBerry ActiveSync Client costs ISPs (mostly webhosts serving small business customers) $36 per user per year and retails for $49 per user per year.

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