MPP Enters the Screencast World
I am pleased to announce the first MPP screencast. This screencast shows the steps for initial configuration of MPP Manager and describes some of the features of MPP GUI.
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MPP Manager 1.03 Release
Today we are pleased to announce MPP Manager 1.0.3. Besides fixing a number of cosmetic issues the following bugs were fixed:
- configuration for mppserver, Qreview and MPP GUI moved to /etc/mppserver
- fixed SSL and added support for SSL certificate installation within the mppserver framework
- added SMTP tab in MPP GUI and revamped how it works
- reorganized menu tree in MPP GUI
- added support for spam_add_spamassassin_hits option in MPP GUI
- fixed log location parsing at install time for correct use in mpp_parser.pl
- now using correct Escape.pm on RH4/CentOS4
- improved translation capability for tool tips and corner cases.
MPP Manager Released
Today we are pleased to announce the release of MPP Manager. MPP Manager is an integrate package with MPP Server, our web platform, MPP GUI, our GUI manager and qReview the manager of spam quarantines and email archives. While this culminates nearly a year of development it is also the first step towards making MPP easier to use, install and manage. It represents a big commitment to GUI controls and the first fruits of this focus. Look for many more refinements and enhancements in our GUI controls this year!
Thanks to all of you who helped so much in this effort!
Technorati Tags: MPP, email security, antispam, Message Partners, email archival
MPP Naming Convention Changes
As we overhaul our web content we are also making some minor product name changes. It will take a while to have the changes permeate all of our literature but you will start to see the names on our more dynamic content.
MPP Core = MPP Enhanced Editoin
MPP Manager = qReview/MPP GUI
MPP Plug-In’s remain unchanged
MPP Community Edition = MPP Free Edition
2008 - The Year of Communications
2008 is the year of communications for Message Partners. The fact is that we have an ass-kicking product that is only getting better but we have done a crap job of telling the world about it. This year we will turn that around though.
2008 will be the year that MP goes Web 2.0. We are already migrating our site to a new, modern platform and coming up with new, interesting ways to convey our messages. We are ripping apart outdated and redundant information in our site and tech docs and consolidating them into our knowledgebase and a streamlined web site. These are only baby steps though, but they will lead us to our goal of clear, concise and compelling communications.
Any feedback you have is greatly appreciated.
2008 Focus for MPP
Coming off of our best year ever, we have high hopes and strong plans for MPP in 2008. 2007 saw the achievement of key milestones for MPP. We had our biggest influx ever of new, major customers ever and we added key partners throughout the world. Our product development moved ahead on track - we saw the first fruits of an extensive development effort to unify our GUI interfaces, we launched a vastly improved email archival product and we delivered many behind the scenes improvements to our core code to make MPP more scalable, reliable and functional.
MPP does many things in many markets but our strengths and areas of focus are clearer than they ever have been.
- MPP is the premier product for service providers to provide value-driven email filtering and archival services. MPP provides the benefits of commercially supported software and leverages the best security components from both open source and commercial sources
- MPP provides a streamlined, web based email archival and compliance solution that is scalable and open.
- MPP is a software appliance that provides industry leading spam and virus protection for SMTP gateways and Unix based email servers. MPP is the boutique brand that outperforms even the largest competitors. No other product focuses on the SMTP relay like MPP.
In 2008 our primary goals are to develop new global and domestic channel partners, strengthen our archival and compliance offerings and enhance the scalability and functionality of our email filtering solution.
While other years have seen rapid releases of features in MPP core, we have slowed our feature development and focused core development on deep structural improvements to reach our goal of carrier class performance and reliability.
Beyond the core we are focusing on improving usability, installation, administration and internationalization for all of our GUI’s. MPP is an international product with international customers and it is a mandate in 2008 that all products can easily operate with international character sets and can be quickly translated. To this end all of our GUI tools will add functionality towards achieving this goal.
We think, in fact, we know, that 2008 will be an exciting year for MPP and we wish you all the same.
Technorati Tags: antispam, email service provider, email security, mpp
MPP De-Webmin’s
I am very happy to announce that we finally have a gui for our email security product, MPP, that exists outside of Webmin. I love Webmin and so do many sys admins but it seems that many don’t like it. So Webmin haters can rejoice because the MPP GUI interface now resides in our own custom web server platform. This is the same web platform that qReview, our spam quarantine and archive manager uses and it is easy to install and very streamlined.
Besides moving the MPP GUI out of Webmin it is also re-designed with a new look, menu structure and re-evaluated command logic. MPP is a completely different product with our new GUI and I hope you will have time to check it out someday.
New MPP Feature - Message Tracking
Message Tracking, the newest major MPP feature module is designed for service providers that need to track every message that comes through their email system. Message Tracking keeps status of a message during each phase of MPP processing and stores this information in a SQL database. MT has separate modules for different features such as spam, archive, etc. that can be enabled or disabled based on your needs, so you can decide exactly what information you need to track. We have built this feature to scale to millions of messages a day and it makes MPP even better suited to service providers.
Technorati Tags: email security, email service providers, service provider, email hosting
MPP for SMTP Gateways - Realization
I have come to the realization that we have done a really bad job of telling the world how great MPP is for SMTP scanning gateways. For years we have been talking about securing email servers with MPP, but with the exception of our Communigate Pro customers, the majority of our big deals are for SMTP scanning gateways. Alternately, we lose deals because our customers seem focused on MPP as an email server tool and not as a gateway product. This is purely due to obfuscated messaging, and now we intend to change this by emphasizing what makes MPP so great for SMTP scanning gateways.
Top reasons that MPP is great for SMTP gateways:
1) MPP is a software solution. hy overpay for bad hardware from email appliances when servers are so affordable now? MPP is available as a VMWare virtual appliance or you can install the components on your own.
2) MPP works with open source AND commercial component technologies. MPP does a whole lot on it’s own, but it can also add open source and commercial virus and spam scanners into the mix. If you are on a tight budget or you love constant tinkering you can use SpamAssassin, but if you need a lot of throughput and accuracy we have great alternatives. Changing engines is generally just a checkbox and all other settings remain unchanged. This is a huge time save.
3) MPP offers the highest level of spam filtering accuracy you will find. It will far surpass stock SpamAssassin.
4) MPP has integrated SMTP and Content based defenses. MPP can do many pre-queue tests and also scan the content of messages if need be. If you are using Amavisd with Postfix you probably have a policy daemon and content filters that are completely independent. MPP has the only integrated policy server and content filter that I know of.
5) All configurations can be defined on a per-domain basis with our policy-engine. Every option in MPP can be defined in a policy-group and applied to a domain, group of email addresses or IP’s. You can add MPP policy group name to your subscriber directory and we can query via LDAP.
6) MPP has a great interface, qReview, for end-users to review email archives and spam quarantines and make basic settings. QReview is multi-domain so you can have different authentication information for each domain. QReview also has multiple levels of administrators so you can define domain level or peer administrators.
7) MPP has a combination of compliance features not found in ANY open source SMTP gateway such as archive and retrieval, content filtering, surveillance, If you think you are satisfying compliance requirements with bcc: think again. If you can’t quickly search and retrieve your email archives you haven’t satisfied any compliance standard that I know of.
MPP is especially great for replacing AmavisD when you have reached the limits of AmavisD in terms of performance or spam filtering accuracy of if you need end-user spam quarantine management.
9) MPP does tons of stuff that has nothing to do with virus or spam filtering and it’s all built in. What kind of stuff? Attachment stripping, adding disclaimers, header filtering, attachment filtering, access-controls (limit who speaks to who) and tons of other email utility features.
10) MPP has security intelligence built in to automatically block dictionary attacks, find outbound spammers and automatically block abusive senders or receivers. These tools alone can stop hundreds of thousands of messages a day on a busy proxy with very minimal resources.
11) MPP allows you to build custom spam scoring algorithms to build scores based on an amalgamation of individual tests. This allows you to do things like RBL’s without making reject decisions
12) MPP works with an MTA and works best with Postfix, though Sendmail, Qmail and Exim are fine alternatives.
Technorati Tags: email security, smtp gateway, postfix, rbl, mpp
MPP Podcast - New Developments But Still the Same Great Solution
Below is a Message Partners‘ podcast covering our newest developments, which includes improvements in usability, and why MPP continues to be the email security solution of choice for large-scale email providers. You can listen to the podcast or simply read the transcript below.
Tell me about some of the recent developments with MPP.
We’ve had some really exciting customer wins. We’re really focusing now on improving the usability of MPP, particularly in two areas. In the archival compliance area and in the management of the solution. We are focusing a lot on adding new capabilities to our archival solution for retrieval, for compliance grade searching, and for export because there’s a growing demand for Linux based archival solutions. And we spent a fair amount of resources reorganizing our GUI and building a whole new web platform for managing both the front end and back end systems.
Are any of these new developments focused on spam accuracy, or are they solely focused on usability?
We think that our detection rates are really the best in the industry. We’re really partnering with some of the best spam technology providers that exist, and there’s really nobody that’s providing any better detection rates then we are right now.
But in the end technology is only a piece of the puzzle; you also have to have usability. Really it comes down to how easy you can install the software, how easy it is for administrators and end-users to operate the software. We feel technologically we’re there already, and that’s really our focus right now, making the software more usable for end-users and administrators.
I’m sure most companies are aware of the vast number of email security solutions available out there right now. What makes MPP unique and why should someone invest in your email security solution?
Well, whenever you’re in a crowded market, differentiation comes from specialization. I mean, of course our spam detection is I think second to none, and anyone that tests that will see that we really have the best spam detection that is available.
But we focus our efforts on a few market niches. MPP is really good for service providers because we support the platforms that they use and we really specialize in multi-domain configurations. MPP is great for people that want to leverage open source because we make open source much easier to use in email security environments. We also have some other small niches in Mac OSX, we’re really the best enterprise grade Mac OSX solution. Those really are our primary strengths.
Technorati Tags: Mac OSX, service providers, email security, open source email security, spam detection, archival, compliance, archival compliance, gui, web platform, detection rates