ANAHEIM, CALIF. – Aiming to tame the growing complexity of enterprise messaging environments, several vendors here at Microsoft Corp.’s MEC 2002 conference introduced new tools to control and secure wired and wireless messaging.
DYS Analytics Inc. rolled out Email Control for Microsoft Exchange, which allows IT managers to automate the measuring, analysis, and reporting of enterprise messaging traffic on their Exchange network. Email Control can be used to reduce infrastructure and management costs by providing more efficient load balancing and capacity planning, faster troubleshooting, and the ability to enforce e-mail usage policies, according to officials at the company, based in Wellesley, Mass.
Addressing the increase of wireless IM, FaceTime Communications Inc. announced IM Auditor for managing IM on wireless devices. The offering is designed to bridge all types of wireless networks and support thin clients for such wireless devices as Palm, Handspring Visor, RIM, and Windows CE. The IM Auditor application can ensure secure and managed IM among mobile devices and create a complete log of wireless and wired IM communications, said Glen Vondrick, president and CEO of FaceTime in Foster City, Calif.
“This takes our IM Auditor product and makes it usable for wireless devices,” Vondrick said. “This is big deal for IT departments that need to track IM [from] wireless users outside the corporate network.”
Meanwhile, StoreAge Networking Technologies Ltd. introduced SVM Policy Manager for Exchange. The product uses a rules-based policy engine to automate the management of storage in Microsoft Exchange environments. The SVM Policy Manager can also maximize application uptime and data availability by allowing processes such as business continuance, disaster recovery, and backup to occur without taking Exchange servers offline.
Also at the show, Rand Corp. rolled out a new e-mail management product designed to reduce e-mail network downtime. Tapping servers from NEC Solutions (America) Inc. and storage management technology from Educom, the Rand e-mail system combats hardware failures and storage bottlenecks, Rand officials said. The combination of fault-tolerant servers with storage management and archiving offers high availability and simplified administration, officials said.
Aiming to bolster Exchange performance, Raxco Software Inc. unveiled PerfectDisk 2000 Version 5.0 for Exchange, which automates disk defragmentation and data compaction in Exchange 5.5 and 2000. The product lets enterprises recapture unused disk space and improve Exchange performance by automating and scheduling the defragmentation and compaction of Exchange data stores. The process is typically done manually, and can be very complex and labor-intensive, Raxco representatives said. Automating the process of recapturing disk space can help organizations reduce storage costs, according to the company.
InfoClarus Inc. announced ActiveNet Outlook Companion, a Windows PC product that aims to improve mobile access to Exchange mail. The product lets users select partial or full downloading, converting, or remote faxing and printing of e-mail, public folder, and calendar attachments. ActiveNet lets mobile works choose only the portions of a document that they need, depending on their connection speed and other factors. ActiveNet Outlook Companion can also convert or extract excerpts from more than 40 file formats and provides remote selection from zip archives and attachments. In addition, the company released Pocket Outlook Companion client/server software that lets Pocket PC users view, download, and print full or partial POP3/IMAP4 e-mail attachments.
Also on hand at MEC, SteelEye Technology Inc. launched LifeKeeper for Exchange, which offers data replication, application failover, and disaster recovery protection for Exchange servers in a single product. SteelEye LifeKeeper is modular, allowing IT managers to implement their choice of capabilities, based on availability requirements, environment considerations, and cost constraints.
