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<TITLE>RE: MailScanner review/comparisons?</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Pete,</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>1. MailScanner won't cost you, up front, per user, per domain, per cpu or annually for subscription as most of these services are scaled. Make a case for spending this money on another security initiative (like enterprise antivirus or ids). Cost is going to be your big win or even a great tie breaker with most management. Anti-spam tools have the marketing materials painted on thick whereas MS relies more on it's track record for advertising so it may be hard to argue in it's favor without doing a side by side comparison. Therefore even if you can't win the argument outright, try to match it feature for feature against the commercial competitor, and then play the cost card to win the deal. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>2. Customization of filtering rules. Most anti-spam products tout a set it and forget it mentality, and rely on standard rulesets and spam signatures. You will need to customize any anti-spam solution to your industry to reduce false positives and increase effectiveness. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>3. You know what's running under the hood. There is value in knowing that there are specific develop efforts driving each of the major components in MS. In some cases, you can swap out components to make the right fit for your organization. This gives you a greater level of flexibility from most commercial offerings because you have total control over everything from the MTA to logging. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>4. Because you only pay for the hardware, you can build a redundant system as a failover or load balance several machines very easily and without incuring any licensing additional cost (with the exception of anti-virus scanners). Scalability should be important to any growing organization. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>5. COUNTERARGUMENT: "yeah, but product X comes with support." You can also get commercial support for MS, its components and the operating system.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Hope this helps. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>On a note of personal experience, the commercial products I have evaluated have been relatively high on false positives, low on percentages of spam caught, weak on customer service and/or overpriced. If you do decide to go with a commercial tool, make sure they give you a trial period so you can back out and build a real tool if you need to. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Jason</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>> -----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> From: Pete [<A HREF="mailto:pete@eatathome.com.au">mailto:pete@eatathome.com.au</A>] </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 9:18 AM</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> To: MAILSCANNER@JISCMAIL.AC.UK</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> Subject: MailScanner review/comparisons?</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> the company i work for has been given to another company - </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> the new parent company have this IT dept that is HELL BENT on </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> using every Microsoft product around and pretty much hate </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> *nix - which is greaaaat, as we all love *nix. They wanna </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> ditch our Domino env and replace with exchange = grrr.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> I piped up and said, how about checking out our MailScanner </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> server, we can easily scan all your mail too - well, they </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> said nah we are getting this new fandangled etrust content </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> server which costs some big dollars, its the best content </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> scanner available to mankind etc. Fine i said, i will leave </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> it at that.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> Next thing i know these guys are all bagging MailScanner to </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> my bosses saying it cannot do all this really basic stuff </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> (like stop heaps of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> spam/viruses) - my broses comes to me and say, explain to us </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> how is MailScanner better than this commercial product - what </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> are we missing out on?</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> I tried to explain to him that even if we use our own </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> experience only as an example, we dont get any email borne </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> viruses, we have trapped xx spam, we never get complaints </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> from users about receiving spam etc etc But this is not </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> enough to combat the people in powerful positions who are </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> pushing their own barrow.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> If you have ever seen a review or professional comment on </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> MailScanner i would love to hear about it, please post a </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> link, or scanned attachment if from a magazine to assist me </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> in building my some form of case against these heathens.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> Any other suggestions of comments really appreciated.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> thanks</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> Pete</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> </FONT>
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