PostPath offers Postpath Email Server 3.1

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA: PostPath, creator of the industry’s only email and collaboration server that offers organizations of all sizes a drop-in alternative to Exchange, has announced PostPath Email Server 3.1.

 The new PostPath Server makes it practical for the first time for SMEs to implement a full-featured Fortune-100-class messaging infrastructure – with native Outlook support, webmail, mobile integration, big mailboxes, and high availability. Plus, the new server avoids the build costs, migration challenges, closed architectures, and ongoing management complexity associated with Microsoft Exchange.

SMEs demand Fortune-100-class messaging and collaboration

Until recently, SMEs rarely chose to support the full range of collaboration capabilities provided by enterprise-class infrastructure. But SME needs are changing, and in 2008 SMEs are trying to adapt to a host of new demands from users:

• Full-featured outlook support. Gone are the days when a typical SME felt its users could live without shared calendaring, document sharing, and the ability to delegate access – full, native Outlook capability has become a must-have.
• Mobile-device support. Once an optional extra for a handful of people, this is becoming a requirement for a large proportion of users.
• Highly functional, highly usable webmail support. Webmail is no longer seen merely as a supplement to an Outlook desktop. For a subset of users – such as those who spend most of their time away from their desks – webmail is an Outlook replacement, which dramatically raises the bar on what they require in terms of webmail functionality and usability.
• Large mailboxes. Now that Linux-based hosting services can provide multi-gigabyte mailboxes for free, many more users demand the same from their corporate email systems.
• High availability. With email so central to conducting business, the need for continuous email service is felt across a broad range of SMEs.

At the same time, an email system must address the normal constraints of SME IT:

• Budget. The email system must be built on a reasonable budget
• Simplicity. To ensure reliable, consistent, and cost-effective operation, the system must be simple to build and manage
• Co-existence and migration. To minimize switching costs, any new system must co-exist with existing infrastructure, and moving users to the new system must be transparent

One option under consideration by SMEs is Microsoft Exchange 2007. However, Exchange 2007 is more complex than earlier Exchange versions – for instance, in the proliferation of different server roles, changed AD configuration, and changed document-sharing (public folder) mechanisms. Exchange 2007 suffers from high adoption costs, requiring upgrades to hardware and management tools, and it fails to address key issues of earlier Exchange versions, such as backup-restore challenges, storage costs, and more. Exchange 2007 is also typically more expensive to purchase than earlier Exchange versions. In other words, Exchange’s current release is more complex and higher priced than the previous release – the exact opposite of what SMEs need.

PostPath 3.1 Delivers Capable, Cost-Effective SME Email and Collaboration

The PostPath Email and Collaboration Server is a drop-in solution featuring deep interoperability with existing corporate systems. In release 3.1, new management tools, broader mobile support, more powerful web-client features, and additional performance optimization on commodity hardware make the PostPath Server the cost-effective, easy-to-adopt, and easy-to-own server for SMEs.

Major features and benefits of PostPath 3.1 include the following:

• Rich, native Outlook support with no need for desktop software changes
• Seamless fit into existing Active Directory installations and public-folder architectures – no reconfiguration required
• Drop-in interoperability with existing Exchange server farms; plus, Exchange 2007 interoperability certification to enable mixed deployments where desired
• High-performance I/O implementation that allows large mailboxes on low-cost storage
• Modest server requirements, with no need for hardware upgrades
• Easy-to-implement backup/restore with newly enhanced restore tool
• Free and flexible high-availability and disaster recovery. Exchange recovery takes hours or even a full day for most companies, but the PostPath Server can be recovered in minutes. What’s more, no additional software licenses or expensive proprietary tools are required for redundant or clustered high-availability configurations.
• New-generation, web-based, easy-to-use graphical management tools that can displace desktop-based Microsoft tools completely if desired
• Comprehensive mobile device support for BlackBerry, ActiveSync, Windows Mobile, IMAP (for iPhone support), and more. Mobile support is optimized to enable a high density of mobile users as SMEs roll out mobile more broadly
• Enhanced browser-independent webmail client, with newly added public-folder access for web-based document sharing. The overall ease-of-use and enhanced functionality of the WebMail client provides a highly responsive user interface that can be used in place of Outlook without sacrificing Outlook-webmail interoperability
• Enhanced quota management with automatic reporting configurable via Active Directory for straightforward management of user mailbox size, for those customers not providing “bottomless” mailboxes

“We’ve seen great interest in the PostPath solution among large enterprises with tens of thousands of employees. However, we’ve been surprised by the extent of the pull from SMEs with up to 2,500 employees – companies that need to upgrade to fully capable email and collaboration infrastructure, but can’t stomach the costs, complexity, and limitations of Exchange 2007,” said Duncan Greatwood, president and CEO of PostPath. “SMEs that historically got by with basic implementations increasingly see features ranging from shared calendaring and broad mobile support through large mailboxes as requirements. Anything less doesn’t cut it, and with PostPath SMEs get that functionality, with higher performance and greater flexibility, but without the expense of buying, deploying, and managing an Exchange infrastructure.”

SME customers embracing PostPath 3.1

“PostPath’s SME customer have been doubling quarter over quarter,” said Greatwood, “That growth is accelerating further with the introduction of the SME-focused PostPath 3.1 release.”

“We outgrew the capabilities of our Windows email server but were reluctant to upgrade to Exchange 2007, even though we wanted its features and functions,” said John Chrobak, network administrator, The Triad Group, “We evaluated several different email collaboration servers and found that PostPath was a full Exchange replacement. PostPath’s calendaring function is huge for us, as is the ability to share contacts enterprise wide.”

The City of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, is now migrating its approximately 250 employees to PostPath from Exchange. “Microsoft Exchange has not lived up to our standards for stability, uptime, or cost of ownership, and Exchange consistently requires a substantial amount of time to keep operational, which is in contrast to PostPath,” said Vince O’Connor, information systems specialist for the city. “From a small IT staff's standpoint, Exchange is simply no longer a viable or affordable option.”