Justification for mailscanner.

[Miguel Koren OBrien de Lacy]

Jim;

I'm sure other have replied along these lines to your question but I'll add to this
because I want to reinforce the message. The reason I use open source (Mail Scanner)
and the reason we recommend it and install/configure it for others is:

1) You can use the amount you already budgeted for other good uses like solid hardware
and more profits (or better salaries). Better hardware, usually, reduces costs and
leads to more profits because of the reduced maintenance and all around problems. So
it is in my experience.
2) Having control over you infrastructure is extremely important; you must know what
is running on your infrastructure and how to correct problems.
3) Being able to tweak the code in an emergency is priceless.
4) Implementing MailScanner/Clam is in my opinion as easy as any other solution
(perhaps even easier).
5) All the effort you put into tweaking the configuration is knowledge invested into
the people in the company, making the knowledge base of the company more valuable.

Of course you have to remember that this applies to the mail server only. If you count
Clam it applies to a samba file server too. But for a complete system you need
protection for Windows servers and workstations. That's where the traditional vendors
come in. So if you have a company with a Unix/Linux mail server and Linux/samba file
and print servers you just need to spend a little (or a lot) for the Windows (and Mac)
PCs.

Miguel

--
Konsultex Informatica (http://www.konsultex.com.br)

---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Limmer, Jim" <JLimmer at CURAGEN.COM>
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Sent: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 16:35:05 -0500
Subject: Justification for mailscanner.

> My company has budgeted a good amount of money for a spam/virus
> filtering email gateway, similar to what I can accomplish with
> mailscanner. We've tested a few commercial products, none to our
> satisfaction. While we are meeting with their sales staff I typically
> jot down each application they are using. It's amazing the amount of
> money some of these vendors are charging for what is 99% open source
> software. Typically these boxes are running redhat, postfix, sa,
> razor... the list goes on. The only proprietary software I see on these
> boxes are their web gui front ends, which are typically attractive, but
> IMHO - useless.
> 
> Anyway, the question was put to me today - how can you justify wanting
> to spend valuable man hours building and configuring our own system
> based on open source, when we've already budgeted enough money to cover
> a commercial solution?
> 
> While the simple answers are the ones that make sense to us
> technological people
> 
> 1> open source is good.
> 2> personal satisfaction of putting your own system together
> 3> It's just darn cool & techo-geeky.
> 
> Unfortunatley, those answers arent going to satisfy the higher ups.
> 
> Anyone seen any good articles, or have any comment that may help me put
> together a good answer to this?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Jim
> 
> -- 
> Esta mensagem foi verificada pelo sistema de antivírus e
>  acredita-se estar livre de perigo.
------- End of Original Message -------


-- 
Esta mensagem foi verificada pelo sistema de antivírus e
 acredita-se estar livre de perigo.