Comparing Email Services
There are so many applications, appliance based and Software as a Service (SaaS) based, that it makes choosing one against another quite a problem.
From a SaaS viewpoint, it's very easy to try out what is on offer as there is, by definition, no hardware to install and manage. Where a service is business critical but not core to the business, it should be easy to set-up, easy to manage and operate and that is really an open door for SaaS.
When it comes to dealing with email security, Vioptim offers Mimecast. There are several other well known names in the market all of which have their goods and bads and we're not attempting to make comparisons between these and the one that Vioptim works with. We've made our choice based on a number of straightforward criteria:
- Service capability, scalability and manageability
- Spam and content filtering effectiveness
- Service availability
- Integrated email archiving
- Email continuity
- Nice to haves
Lining up Mimecast against these criteria, finds many common themes but we can most easily summarise as:
If you want a simple, effective email spam and content filtering system at a relatively low cost, we'd recommend that you look at Google's Postini offering or perhaps a relative newcomer called Spamina. If you want a similar effective spam and content filtering system but with email continuity integrated with Outlook, email archiving integrated with Outlook and some really useful add ons like configurable disclaimers and automatically generated tag messages, then Mimecast is the one to go for.
Mimecast employs the "store and forward" principle. Receipt of the message to the sender will be given by Mimecast as it saves this email in its data centre. Once processed, the email is forwarded to its final destination via a second transaction before it can be said to have arrived. This two stage process has to be managed very carefully so as not to lose an email or get stuck with an increasing backlog.
The main advantage of the store and forward principle is that it makes archiving very simple. As the email is already being held for processing, it's a really simple step to save it in the archive
Where Mimecast scores very highly is in the ease of use category when considering email continuity services and email archiving. By integrating these capabilities within Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, Mimecast provides an extremely effective and simple system to use and manage. Mimecast also has enhanced stationery, referring to its capability of adding custom tag messages to outgoing emails, allowing different disclaimers and marketing messages to be added dependent on criteria set up by the business.
For the UK market, Mimecast also ensures local jurisdiction archiving meaning that it has UK based data centres where all archived emails are held.