Email continuity services i.e. Messagelabs - Caveats, lessons learned, gotchas?

Hi all,

I am in the process of reviewing some email continuity solutions such as the one offered by Messagelabs. Solutions such as this are not cheap, however, I believe they reduce complexity when it comes to administration and serves as a feasible DR type solution for emails as opposed to purchasing a new server for DR purposes.

Have any of you had first hand experience using this service and what are your opinions and/or feedback?

Thanks in advance.

From serverfault molecule

• If you are looking at alternatives for MessageLabs, suggest considering Webroot who a lot of MessageLabs clients have switched to. They also offer email continuity far more economically and have a far more advanced faster service than MessageLabs.

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• Hi John

  The Messagelabs solution is actually based on the Dell MessageOne platform, which is why it's expensive as they're licensing it in...

  Many moons ago I was a Messagelabs customer but left them for Email Systems (now Webroot) because of the inflexibility of the platform and bad customer service.... My best customer was down for a day because of them :( and we nearly lost the customer.

  If you're looking for just a security solution to swap out Messagelabs- Webroot is a good option but they don't offer the continuity service I think you're after.

  Have you had a look at Mimecast? I've recently joined Mimecast because they've got a brilliant technology- security, continuity and archive as a SaaS solution. You can give your email users 100% uptime- if your users are in outlook they won't notice any downtime because Mimecast continuity is integrated within Outlook.

  I like Mimecast because it's privately owned, well funded and has brilliant technology which is all owned and fully integrated (no third party licensed / integrated).

  I'm jpirie@mimecast.com or on twitter @justinpirie

  I wish I'd had Mimecast when I was managing 200+ exchange servers it would have let me and my team sleep many more nights!

  Best,

  Justin

  p.s. I was just chatting to my new colleagues that used to work at Messagelabs... apparently ML support is being integrated with Symantec support with predictable consequences :(

  molecule : @Justin: Hey Justin, thanks for your post. I did look at Mimecast but I am not sure of the level of support they can offer since I am based in Hong Kong. Could you shed some light? MessageLabs continuity is also integrated within Outlook. Users have to run on cache mode and have some sort of "connector" with the MessageLabs servers/service. I believe this is the same sort of architecture driving mimecast? I also had a brief look at the Webroot site and like you mentioned, it is more geared towards security and not email continuity.
  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• Hi Justin and John,

  I hope to dispell some of the confusion, misconceptions and informationed portrayed here.

  The MessageLabs support is not being integrated into Symantec support processes at this point. They are in North America and available 24/7/365. You call the same MessageLabs tech support team that has always been there. The MessageLabs division still continues to operate as an independent business responsible for its own P and L. The availability of email continutiy through MessageLabs is not that expesive for the level of solution provided. Email av,as,(ic,cc) email continutiy, with 30 days retention of historical mail( can be longer). that is accessible during offline server transparently to your end users. SAves me from working weekends. Can do updates during the week now. Works with my BES for mobile support. All outlook info, but task, are updated everyday and made available during fail over. Check out there complete email safeguard bundle. You will get the best AV and AS around plus there Image control and content control which enabled me to enforce acceptable usage policies internally and protect our organization from data leakage via email. It even integrates perfectly with their policy based encryption service.

  John Gardeniers : @Gregg, that sounds like an add, not an answer. What is your connection with MessageLabs and Symantec? Your comments also do not tally with observed reality.
  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• @ Gregg- can you elaborate please? I don't see any real clarifications... except that you'll only get 30 days of messages available during a continuity event unless you're in cached mode (ours is 10 years for UEM Enterprise) and your support is delivered via North America....

  Plus you highlight the updating issues- now it's down to hours instead of days- Mimecast is real time. What about MessageOne being third party software?

  Any other thoughts?

  @justinpirie

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• As a Premier Channel Partner for Webroot for many years, I can speak from experience by saying Webroot's EMail SaaS is second to none. We have thousands of mailboxes in all the different market verticals currently using Webroot filtering, including aerospace defense firms, healthcare organizations, legal and CPA firms etc. These are demanding clients that need as many 9's of uptime as possible and extremely responsive tech support if needed. Some have compliance requirements too with regards to archiving, and all of them like Webroot's Business Contunuity feature. I thoroughly recommend Webroot's SaaS and security solutions. They are a fantastic company to deal with.

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• @Justin Which part of "can be longer" do you not understand? ;)

  This is default (from memory of my implementation) but is adjustable. I'm really impressed with this service, and consider any best-of-breed solution to be a safer bet than homegrown and cost/quality compromised solutions.

  Just my 2p worth...

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• @John Gardeniers- I highly suspect you're right- am I the only one being honest about being a vendor here???

  I wonder if serverfault registers IP addresses... :)

  @harry- I resent your "home grown" comment. Messagelabs was "home grown". In fact, it was home grown, otherwise know as coded, 38.7 miles from where I live. That's the only way humanly known to create software, as far as I know... (We should go into business if you've discovered another way. :p )

  Far from home grown being a problem, we've created a best of breed, fully integrated stack, unlike the hotch potch of the ML stack, which is a fruit salad of un-integrated solutions.

  Anyway- like you said John- the comments do not reflect reality.

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• We used Softscan (Danish company) wich worked great, until they got eaten by MessageLabs.

  I think it's working OK. The only issue I have with them right now is that I manually have to upload new address lists to them to whitelist our own email adresses (else we get user non-existant etc). Hopefully they will provide LDAP over VPN or something like that in the future.

  From pauska