|
The Origin of a Legacy Problem
A Big Legacy
Email is the number one form of business communication and the most widely used application of the Internet. However, the core technology for delivering email - embedded in all email systems, applications and appliances - is based on 25-year-old open source technology, the mail transport agent or "MTA" (e.g. sendmail, postfix). As with most legacy technologies now connected to the Internet, these applications were not designed with the considerations for the massive traffic volumes, evolving security threats, and diverse, sophisticated business requirements faced by today's large mail network operators.
Yet, in conjunction with the success of email as an Internet application, legacy open-source MTAs are among the most widely deployed applications on the Internet, and have come to be equated with core routing and delivery capabilities for email generally. They are standard in core parts of enterprise email network infrastructure and embedded in email security and network appliances, with few available alternatives.
Legacy, Open Source Email Applications Are Outmoded
Enterprises employ multiple layers of email network infrastructure to perform critical processes for routing, security, compliance and other business needs. Generally, there are two major layers of email infrastructure outside the local mail host (e.g. Exchange host): an "email gateway" at the edge of the network where traffic is processed against external security threats, and an "email backbone" inside the network where messages are routed and processed (i.e. scanned, encrypted, archived, copied for review or acted on in other ways) in tandem with various internal business systems.
Many organizations came to rely on these legacy open-source mail transport applications prior to the evolution of today's requirements for performance, policy capabilities, security, compliance, business automation and the management, monitoring and support functions to support operation as mission-critical Tier 1 infrastructure. Enterprise IT executives are finding find that their systems struggle to meet business demands and operating requirements.
In addition to the central role of legacy MTA applications in the corporate mail network, the same technology dominates the systems that send various types of application-generated email to communicate with customers for transactions, publications, service, marketing and other customer relationship interactions. The emergence of this type of email correspondence as a dominant channel for communicating with customers has shot this area of infrastructure into prominence as critical to enterprise activities. As with other areas of the enterprise network, the limitations of MTAs in scalability, flexibility, application integration and management have created a variety of challenges to the growth and proficiency of these critical revenue-generating activities.
A Big Opportunity
Companies conduct as much as 97% of their communications via email, and it is accepted as written confirmation of approvals or orders in 79% of organizations1. Email is now a business-critical channel for enterprises; its capabilities and operational performance are critical to revenue targets, operating activities, customer relationships and financial performance.
Email enables all business communication, and, as such, has a foundational role in both the top-line and bottom line performance of the company. And, the role of email for critical business correspondence has also driven new (imperative) requirements associated with compliance with legislation (Sarbanes Oxley, GLBA, HIPAA) and internal corporate governance to manage business and legal risk.
In addition to the growing performance and policy-centric demands of email infrastructure, today's global enterprises are increasing their use of email to communicate with customers, and these communications are not limited to marketing activities. Businesses are saving billions each year by conducting various types of customer interactions via email. Financial institutions, for example, use email for everything from account statements to banking transactions to analyst publications ? mission-critical and revenue-critical correspondence for their businesses.
A Strategic Technology Issue
Operationally, a key strategic technology goal for IT executives is to avoid the creation of high-value, high-risk application "sinkholes." They accomplish this goal by avoiding technologies that don't easily integrate with the enterprise's technology standards and strategies and by avoiding "fixed bundles", preventing further growth or locking the organization into a strict approach to solving the issues at hand.
Legacy MTA applications (and appliances and applications that are based upon them), do not provide the scalability, flexibility, and application support required to fulfill the needs of high-performance, feature-intensive enterprise mail networks and programs, and tend to evolve "sink-holes" where additions and improvements are difficult and costly.
|
