16 Feb Frying spam for the masses
Green Bay, Wis. — Getting more spam in your inbox than ever? Green Bay-based Solinus has just introduced a possible solution.
With its new MailFoundry 4100 anti-spam appliance, first shown at the LinuxWorld show in Boston this week, Solinus has taken a “get-what-you-pay-for” approach to its product line by offering 1,000 percent more capacity for 40 percent more money.
Solinus, which also filters spam as a hosted service and has employees constantly watching for new scams, offers the Linux-powered MailFoundry 4100 at a $3,499 price point with no per-user fees. This latest product can process 10 million messages per day, compared to the MailFoundry 1100’s 1 million-message throughput (the 1100 currently sells for $2,499). The company also has changed its subscription fees from a three-tiered system to a one-size-fits-all $999 per year.
The other big change is the move from a product based on Sun Solaris on Sparc to Linux. While Solinus viewed the move to Linux rather than Sun’s Opteron platform as a favorable business proposition, the move also injected the 4100 with some major horsepower, according to Solinus Business Development Manager Todd Lohenry.
“Our reward for doing that was a tenfold increase [in throughput],” Lohenry said. “The engine is the same core engine. It’s really a testament to the power of Linux. It’s a stripped-down, custom distribution of Linux that has only what we need to support our engine. The box is very elegant.
“The really great thing about this is that because of Linux and because of the way we’ve built our organization, we’re able to offer an enterprise-class solution for every business in the state of Wisconsin,” Lohenry added. “One of our biggest core demographic groups is K-12 schools in Wisconsin. If K-12 schools in Wisconsin can afford this, everyone can.”
Lohenry also pointed to the 4100’s new interface, as did the company’s CEO.
“In addition to successfully migrating our product to Linux, we have implemented a brand new, easy-to-use interface along with outbound email scanning as a standard feature at no additional cost” said David Troup, founder and CEO of Solinus, in a release. “With its flash boot, hardened Linux, dual NIC ports, serial console, LCD and multiple rack mount options, the MailFoundry 4100 is the best value for enterprise anti-spam and email security.”
All of MailFoundry’s family of anti-spam appliances are powered by Solinus’ MessageIQ email scanning engine, which the company says blocks up to 99 percent of spam and 100 percent of all known viruses with a near-zero false-positive rate. Solinus’ team of editors review spam attacks in real time and create spam profiles designed to block specific spam without creating false positives. Updates are automatically distributed to MailFoundry appliances worldwide every five minutes.
“Until now, products with this technology have been budget breakers,” Troup said. “MailFoundry changes the anti-spam landscape in terms of technology, performance and cost.”
Lohenry noted while blocking viruses is mission-critical, spam is more of a nuisance than anything.
So, “why should companies charge mission-critical pricing for something that’s just a nuisance?” he mused. “We’re taking anti-spam back into the nuisance pricing. That’s our philosophy. We’re seeing it as an empowerment thing. We want people to forget about spam and be able to get back to their core business.”