Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » The evolution of email...begins with its past

November 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The evolution of email...begins with its past

TAGS: Infrastructure

The best way to usher in a new world is often to coexist well with the old world.

This is one reason that Centeris is an interesting company, allowing enterprises to move to Linux without giving up the handholding of Microsoft's server management interface.

It's also one reason I like PostPath so much. PostPath promises a revolution in corporate messaging, but it assumes the world as it is (140 million Exchange mailboxes), not the ideal world (Linux messaging everywhere). PostPath offers true drop-in compatibility with Exchange, such that an enterprise can scale out its Exchange infrastructure with...PostPath (at a fraction of the cost (both acquisition and TCO), up to 20X better performance, and significantly easier administration).

What's not to love?

PostPath recently got even better, adding its Remote Office Edition. I stopped by PostPath for a demo today, and was impressed by what I saw. Here's what it's all about (in Duncan's words):

Historically, customers with remote offices have found themselves on the horns of a dilemma with Exchange. Deploy remotely (distributed), and you drive administration and management costs, as well tending to end up with an unreliable service since it is hard to maintain Exchange consistently and effectively in remote offices. Deploy at a NOC (centrally) [Network Operation Center], and you drive up bandwidth costs and reduce the quality of the user experience with high latency.

PostPath Remote Office Edition solves this problem:

• Enables deployment of low-maintenance server at a remote office
  
• High performance enables low-cost hardware + storage
  
• Replicates the remote server back to the NOC using standard Linux - DRBD
  
• IT manages the replicate copy at the NOC - even does backup there
  
• Can turn on high-availability (HA) at the NOC if desired
  
• With HA, if remote office hardware fails, failover takes less than one minute
  
• WAN bandwidth costs minimized by local service for remote users
  
• Remote users get a high performance, high reliability solution (i.e., they're happy)
  
• Administration is simple and centralized (i.e., IT is happy)

In short, PostPath offers real high availability that is functionally better than what Microsoft Exchange offers, and at a dramatically lower cost. Very cool, Duncan. Now I just want it under a different license. ;-)

Posted by Matt Asay on November 15, 2006 09:39 PM

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