The software update focuses on what the company's founder says is the main driver of SMB services sales.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [June 9, 2008]

Today, Campbell Calif.-based software maker MailSite is announcing the release of version 9 of its MaiSite Fusion 9 Server product. Version 9, says John Davies, MailSite's Chairman, founder, president, and CEO, is a major upgrade targeted at SMB customers that use mobile devices and the webhosts that serve them.

Are mobile phones that important? "They are the driver for hosted services right now," says Davies. "Especially for companies offering hosted Exchange, the driver is mobile phones."

With Exchange Server 2007 and other recent changes, doing it right is getting no easier, and this benefits those offering hosted services. "Small businesses want a SaaS service rather than on premise. As mobile becomes more complex, fewer want to do it themselves."

It's a competitive businesses, and hosts need to distinguish their offering. "Margins and pricing are going down," Davies says. "Microsoft is entering the market too, selling hosted Exchange."

Most MailSite customers, Davies says, offer Exchange in addition to MailSite. "A company like RackSpace has a hosted Exchange offering and also has a house brand hosted e-mail service that's 30 percent to 50 percent less expensive than hosted Exchange. RackSpace uses their own proprietary technology, but our customers do the same thing with MailSite."

Features
MailSite Fusion 9 offers an ActiveSync server with DirectPush. Thus it works with the major smart phones: iPhone 2.0, Windows Mobile 5 and 6, and any other phone that has ActiveSync (some phones have it available as a premium option not included in the base price).

MailSite says that Fusion 9 lowers costs, both hardware and software, by rolling three boes into one: the messaging server, mobile server, and security server are combined.

Operating costs thereby decline, too, further lowering the cost of ownership.

MailSite claims 10 years of experience in the webhosting environment, and has designed the product to support resellers and to allow "rolling in place upgrades" which means that the system can be upgraded without downtime (assuming the webhost has redundant servers).

The target market for Fusion 9 Server is webhosts with 50,000 to 500,000 business subscribers. The end user target market is small businesses.

Pricing and availability
MailSite Fusion 9 is available today from 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.

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