The premium provider of messaging appliances throws the latest in hardware and software at e-mail, that vital service that is also the biggest headache for ISPs.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [January 31, 2008]

When Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Mirapoint challenged the messaging world in 1998, some were amused and some were annoyed.

Ten years later, the company is the premium provider of appliances in this space, and this week announced upgrades to its two key products, the Mirapoint Message Server and the Mirapoint RazorGate.

The Message Server does e-mail, groupware, and policy management. The RazorGate provides protection in the form of anti-spam and anti-virus.

"We're seeing a vibrancy in the ISP market," says Alan Elliot, vice president of marketing at Mirapoint. "We're seeing a rebirth in the business around the triple play: TV, phone, and internet. A lot of companies that weren't there before are investing in the platform. The issue with competition has settled down and the price war is over. ISPs now have to add value. Prices are as low as they can get."

As traffic has risen, the company has moved from one appliance to more, introducing the RazorGate in January of 2006 and the RazorSafe (offering archiving) in December of 2007. All are based on the same proprietary operating system. Elliot says that customers can change the function of a box by buying software keys, so that old hardware need never go to waste.

Of course, both hardware and software get updated regularly. The Message Server uses a large amount of storage. All boxes use the latest chips and have been upgraded to quad core in the latest release (Mirapoint also tweaked the OS to take advantage of the chip upgrade).

The products
The most recent announcement was of the following product models: the RazorGate 160, 600, and 6000; and the Message Server 600 and 6000. The reason for the upgrades? Just to keep up. Everything's getting bigger: spam volume, message volume, the size of individual messages, and storage requirements.

The Message Server has better hardware, provided through Mirapoint's partnership with NetApp. "NetApp is our SAN," explains Elliot. Other top class hardware is also available. For example, Mirapoint has a pizza box that is an option in IBM BladeCenter servers.

Intense e-mail usage is now the norm. "We recognize that e-mail is the new archiving system. I keep everything in IMAP folders and my mailbox is 10 GB," says Elliot.

The hardware offers up to 128 TB configurations, in clusters with each individual Message Center addressing 8 TB of storage. Again, it's about preparing for the future. "I like being where we are now: the biggest system we can build is bigger than any we've sold."

RazorGate has a fundamentally rewritten anti-spam system that supports two spam engines running simultaneously. One engine is Mirapoint's own heuristic system and the other is a reputation system. Combined, the company says, the two systems offer a spam catch rate of at least 98 percent and "virtually zero" false positives. While some vendors try hard to raise the catch rate, ISPs tend to like vendors who focus on eliminating false positives, even if that means a lower catch rate, a trend that goes back to Brightmail's successes in 2002.

Elliot admits—pointing out that many of his competitors would not—that algorithms have to be tweaked in response to attacks and that these numbers can change. ISPs pay for the service because they trust a dedicated company like Mirapoint to do the micro-management and respond to attacks better than they can and on a full time basis (24x7x365).

We have not covered RazorSafe before (it was released in December). The product offers top of the line archiving, working in real time, with tape indexing, regulatory-compliant storage (that users cannot alter), and de-duplication (so that an e-mail sent to everyone in a company is only stored once).

The business case
E-mail is ever more important, especially to business customers. Invoices are sent and received by e-mail. Deals are confirmed by e-mail. Lawsuits can be won with it (or lost, too).

"ISPs should be serving customers, not babysitting boxes," argues Elliot. "We figured this out with routers—we don't build them with software and servers anymore—so let's do the same with the mail server."

Pricing and availability
All Mirapoint products are available now.

The RazorSafe starts at $19,995, the RazorGate starts at $8,300, and the Message Server starts at $10,500. There are a wide variety of options and configurations, including clusters, so prices can vary widely.

—End