Mirapoint Intros New 45-Series Appliances Designed To Increase The Reliability, Security, and Performance Of Message Networks

Mirapoint has announced new high-performance, feature-rich editions of its Message Server and Message Director email and security appliances designed to combat growing security threats and meet the mission critical email needs of enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions, as well as service providers. The Mirapoint Message Server 45-Series offers the industry’s highest price-performance for a broad range of email services, including desktop email, web and wireless access, as well as collaborative applications like group calendaring and address book services. The new Message Director MD450 provides a multi-layered security gateway for customers with existing email servers. To be officially published in January 2004, both new platforms incorporate Intel Xeon processors and hyperthreading technology to deliver the industry’s highest SPECmail (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) performance, supporting up to 310,000 SPECmail users on a single Message Server and over 600,000 messages per hour with the Message Director.

Unlike competitive solutions that require a complex and difficult-to-manage integration of general-purpose hardware and software components, Mirapoint’s purpose-built appliances provide customers with a single-source, integrated solution optimised for email service delivery and advanced security protection against threats, such as hackers, spam, and viruses. The new 45-Series products combine the advantages of integration with higher-performance hardware and new software features available in Mirapoint Messaging Operating System (MOS) 3.4, enabling customers to keep pace with the ever-growing capacity and security demands being put on their message networks.

“We’re seeing a trend around organisations preferring to purchase email- and security-threat products from fewer vendors,” said Dana Gardner, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “The preference for inclusive and integrated products is driven largely by the need for easier management, lower TCO, and the need to reduce finger-pointing that can happen with multiple products and vendors. Mirapoint’s appliances are helping to solve these issues. The Mirapoint Message Server and Message Director products provide customers with higher levels of integration in an inclusive platform approach to meet both email and security requirements.”

The Mirapoint Message Server is the industry’s only dedicated appliance that integrates email routing, storage, access and management with comprehensive, multi-layered security. The new Message Server 45-Series is designed to support the enterprises growing deskless workforce population as well as any customer trying to deliver email to a broad base of users that demand anytime, anywhere access to carrier-grade email services. In addition to high-performance hardware and integrated security features, the Message Server 45-Series includes these new enhancements:
– Webmail and enhanced calendaring – Provides users with a native email client-like experience, accessible from anywhere through a standard Web interface, plus fully integrated group calendaring and address book features to facilitate online collaboration.
– HTML compose – Webmail feature that allows users to create e-mails with rich fonts, colors, and embedded hyperlinks.
– Nested folders – Provides users the same flexibility for managing message content and organizing into hierarchical folders as native email clients offer.

“The deskless workforce e-mail market is currently $12.8 million, but by 2007, the market is expected to be $764 million,” said Sara Radicati of the Radicati Group. “A significant portion of today’s enterprise users are either not connected via email or unable to access this critical application remotely and securely. With a sizable share of the current market, Mirapoint understands the magnitude of the deskless workforce trend and has integrated both e-mail and security functions into its appliances to help capture a larger market share.”

Designed to complement an existing email server, like Exchange, Lotus, or the Mirapoint Message Server, the Mirapoint Message Director provides a multi-layered security approach to protect against hackers, spam, and virus threats, as well as advanced management of message traffic through policy enforcement tools, content filters, and detailed reporting. In addition to Mirapoint’s Full-Spectrum spam analysis, identification, filtering, and management features, the Message Director MD450 includes integrated anti-virus protection and advanced features for addressing corporate liability, which in some cases is tied to industry-specific regulatory requirements:
– Custom message processing – Allows granular definition of different security-oriented filtering rules, such as filter priorities or message-handling options, that can be tailored for individual users or groups.
– Content filtering enhancements – Allows enterprises to protect against email abuse, such as the distribution of profanity or harassing emails, as well as defend against leaks of company-confidential information. Content filters work by using editable word lists that scan message traffic and accordingly take action if a certain keyword is identified in the message body, header, or MIME attachments. This includes scanning attachments, like Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, or Excel documents.
– Queue management tools – To complement a corporate liability strategy, these tools allow IT managers to view messages in transit, quarantine questionable correspondence, and gain more control over incoming and outgoing message traffic. – New easy-to-use web administration tools – Drives down management and operations costs by making it easy to deploy Mirapoint appliances in minutes, as well as customise the Message Director for the highest levels of security effectiveness.
– Secure webmail proxy – Provides users with secure remote access to existing web-based email applications, like Outlook Web Access or Lotus iNotes.

To complement any message network built with Mirapoint’s email or security appliances, the new Mirapoint Operations Console, a license-enabled software feature, provides centralised management and monitoring of all Mirapoint hosts, offering unified alerting, reporting, and the ability to apply filter and configuration options across multiple systems with ease.

Pricing and Availability
The new 45-Series editions of the Message Server and Message Director are currently available. The Message Server starts at $15k, which includes the core hardware, software, and storage. The Message Director starts at $25k, which also includes hardware, software, storage, plus an LDAP routing license. Advanced features like client protocol licenses (IMAP, Webmail, calendaring) or security features (spam or virus protection) are priced on a per-user basis with discounts based on volume.

About Mirapoint
Mirapoint is a leader in solutions for message networks used by service provider, enterprise, education and government institutions. Customers use Mirapoint solutions to build message networks that intelligently and securely route, store, access and manage Internet messages, including email. Mirapoint is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company has more than 600 customers worldwide. For more information on Mirapoint, visit its Web site at www.mirapoint.com.