Aiming to tame the growing complexity of enterprise messaging
environments, several vendors at Microsoft's MEC 2002 conference
introduced tools to control and secure wired and wireless
messaging.
DYS Analytics rolled out Email Control for Microsoft Exchange,
which allows IT managers to automate the measuring, analysis and
reporting of enterprise messaging traffic on their Exchange
network.
Email Control can be used to reduce infrastructure and management
costs by providing more efficient load balancing and capacity
planning, faster troubleshooting and the ability to enforce e-mail
usage policies.
Addressing the increase of wireless instant messaging (IM),
FaceTime Communications announced IM Auditor for managing IM on
wireless devices. The offering is designed to bridge all types of
wireless networks and support thin clients for such wireless
devices as Palm, Handspring Visor, RIM, and Windows CE.
The IM Auditor application can ensure secure and managed IM among
mobile devices and create a complete log of wireless and wired IM
communications, said Glen Vondrick, president and chief executive
officer of FaceTime.
"This takes our IM Auditor product and makes it usable for wireless
devices," Vondrick said. "This is a big deal for IT departments
that need to track IM [from] wireless users outside the corporate
network."
Meanwhile, StoreAge Networking Technologies introduced SVM Policy
Manager for Exchange. The product uses a rules-based policy engine
to automate the management of storage in Microsoft Exchange
environments.
The SVM Policy Manager can also maximise application uptime and
data availability by allowing processes such as business
continuance, disaster recovery and backup to occur without taking
Exchange servers offline.
Also at the show, Rand rolled out an e-mail management product
designed to reduce e-mail network downtime. Tapping servers from
NEC Solutions and storage management technology from Educom, the
Rand e-mail system combats hardware failures and storage
bottlenecks.
The combination of fault-tolerant servers with storage management
and archiving offers high availability and simplified
administration, Rand said.
Aiming to bolster Exchange performance, Raxco Software unveiled
PerfectDisk 2000 Version 5.0 for Exchange, which automates disc
defragmentation and data compaction in Exchange 5.5 and 2000.
The product lets enterprises recapture unused disc space and
improve Exchange performance by automating and scheduling the
defragmentation and compaction of Exchange data stores.
The process is usually manual and can be very complex and
labour-intensive. Automating the process of recapturing disc space
can help organisations reduce storage costs, Raxo executives
said.
InfoClarus announced ActiveNet Outlook Companion, a Windows PC
product that aims to improve mobile access to Exchange mail. The
product lets users select partial or full downloading, converting
or remote faxing and printing of e-mail, public folder and calendar
attachments.
ActiveNet lets mobile works choose only the portions of a document
that they need, depending on their connection speed and other
factors.
ActiveNet Outlook Companion can also convert or extract excerpts
from more than 40 file formats and provides remote selection from
zip archives and attachments.
The company also released Pocket Outlook Companion client/server
software that lets Pocket PC users view, download, and print full
or partial POP3/IMAP4 e-mail attachments.
Also on view at MEC, SteelEye Technology launched LifeKeeper for
Exchange, which offers data replication, application failover, and
disaster recovery protection for Exchange servers in a single
product.
SteelEye LifeKeeper is modular, allowing IT managers to implement
their choice of capabilities, based on availability requirements,
environment considerations and cost constraints.
MEC continues tomorrow (11October).