Spam defense

It’s generally accepted that spam protection, is a requirement for the productive use of e-mail these days.  Traditionally, businesses have used software to filter out the volumes of spam, but more recently, the use of local hardware appliances have become popular.  Yet, there are drawbacks to both these solutions that have opened the door for more seamless solutions like cloud-based e-mail defense.  In short, traditional solutions, whether hardware or software-based, allow spam to get to your network, using up your valuable bandwidth along the way. 

Additionally, most (but not all) of these traditional solutions don’t:

• Provide e-mail continuity (retain e-mail when your e-mail server is unavailable)
• Provide the ability to securely view e-mails without downloading them
• Include the ability to send & respond e-mail if your mail server is down. 

In essence, these are some of the greatest advantages of cloud-based spam protection.  But there are other, less acute advantages, as well:

• Almost no upfront costs
• Zero internal costs for managing or administering the system
• Little to no training required
• Seamless deployment
• Integrated reporting

Like any technology, isn’t a perfect solution for every business and should be analyzed within the scope of your specific business needs, goals, and operations.  However, the advantages are compelling enough that it’s worth taking a close look.

Blogging from the Cloud Summit Conference in Dallas

As a part of ITP’s ongoing commitment to being on top of the latest in technology and business practices we attend the latest in business conferences.  Yesterday was entirely devoted to the cloud (cloud computing) and what it means for your business.  The staggering statistic that’s facing IT companies is the Gartner prediction that 20% of companies in the next 5 years will have NO traditional IT.

That was balanced by Microsoft and HP’s presentations about hybrid cloud computing.  They state what seems most likely to me, that people will need to protect certain data and that will still be on premise but that some data and some services/solutions can be delivered from the cloud more effectively and more cost efficiently today.

After session after session from the bleeding edge companies providing cloud and grid resources the takeaway most interesting to me at the end of the day came from Microsoft’s Matt Thompson, Platform Evangelist.  He said (paraphrasing) that the cloud is still young and we have not yet seen the greatest innovations and that even Microsoft’s Azure (his baby) can use tunning and that service companies like ITP will be the ones that will help bridge the gap for our clients and the computing resources now available on demand from great companies like Microsoft.
Side note:  Matt also said he loves his iPad.  Between Matt’s comments and reading the announcements by Steve Jobs live as it came through from WWDC that the new iphone will have Bing on it.  I started getting warm Apple and Microsoft thoughts, maybe we can all get along.