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How big a problem is spam? According to one research firm, 47 percent of all e-mail traffic qualifies as spam. It's not expected to get better anytime soon. In fact, The Radicati Group expects that by 2007, 70 percent of e-mail traffic will be spam — that translates into an expected 54 billion spam messages a day. Of course, they won't all be in your in-box. It will just seem that way.

"Spam has reached crisis proportions," said Alex Hawkinson, CEO of Apptix, a private-label ASP the offers hosted Microsoft Exchange through service provider and reseller partners. To help its customers help their customers control spam and other troublesome e-mails, Apptix today announced that is has added anti-spam and content-filtering capabilities to its suite of on-demand messaging and collaboration services.

The Sterling, Va.-based ASP tapped Clearswift for the anti-spam and content-filtering applications, which will be integrated with hosted Microsoft Exchange services using Apptix's TECOS 4.0 service management platform. TECOS is designed to ease the automation, standardization and provisioning hosted applications.

The anti-spam software works similar to the way anti-virus protects users, Hawkinson said. Using its SpamActive platform. Clearswift sets up decoy sites and collects and analyzes the e-mails. Its database is updated daily and tracks the latest attempts from spammer community, according to Clearswift. New profiles are automatically sent out to users everyday.

The content-filtering service can block e-mail based on keywords, contents (e.g., any e-mail that has video attached), whether or not encryption is used, and many other criteria, Hawkinson said.

To make it simpler to customize tolerance levels, the software can be configured through control panels built for both service providers and users. "It's granular down to the end user," Hawkinson said.

In the competitive and low-margin hosted Exchange market, these services represent a "great opportunity for new revenue," Hawkinson told ASPnews. "Service providers will sell and brand the service and set pricing." While pricing will vary, he said, the anti-spam and content-filtering services will add roughly $.50 to $2 per user, per month in subscription fees.

Apptix is listed by ASPnews as a Top 30 Service Enabler.

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