Sendmail officials Tuesday announced Mailstream Content Manager,
the first application of the company’s Advanced Content Engine. The
new middleware product sits between Sendmail’s Mailcenter e-mail
server and end-user Intelligent Inbox.
The product is part of a new initiative by Sendmail, a software company known more for
the role it plays in the e-mail server industry. Sendmail is
a commercial offshoot of the popular open source mail transfer agent (MTA), also called
Sendmail, which was created in 1981.
The Emeryville, Calif., company has OEM
Cloudmark and McAfee to provide integrated anti-spam and anti-virus features to go
with the software suite, though Sendmail’s Web site states Mailstream will
interface with most third-party software products.
Mailstream incorporates spam filters, anti-virus protection and policy
management capabilities; officials plan to provide similar
controls over other types of message traffic, like instant messages and
video chat sessions, in the future.
Built into the software is a policy management engine, which lets IT managers set business rules to
any incoming or outgoing e-mail, protecting leaks of intellectual property
or other confidential information, in addition to setting spam and virus
guidelines.
Mailstream is a plug-and-play kind
of platform for message control: Customers can elect to “plug” in an
anti-virus or anti-spam program to the suite, and officials say the
Content Engine is extensible, which will allow upcoming applications the
same option.
Advanced Content Engine is designed to be the foundation for a line of message
processing applications. In addition to support for spam and anti-virus applications, it
allows for upcoming e-mail authentication technologies
like Yahoo’s DomainKeys and Microsoft’s
Sender ID for E-Mail.
The goal is integrated message control for any existing or upcoming type of
message. Officials note statistics published by Osterman Research,
which found nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they preferred an
integrated e-mail security application approach.
While content scanning is today’s most effective solution to spam and virus
protection, John Stormer, Sendmail senior vice president of worldwide
marketing, sees ultimate protection coming from e-mail authentication.
“Ultimately, the answer is about sender authentication or
authenticating domains and being able to filter in messages vs.
filtering them out,” Stormer continued. “Content scanning is not the long-term answer
to spam and fraud; another benefit of Mailstream Content Manager is that it
has the very flexible capability to institute policies that we think are
going to turn everything on its head.”
Mailstream Content Manager, available now, starts at $16,000 for 500 users
and a year’s subscription to the Cloudmark and McAfee services.