Internet Solutions (IS) and Synaq have launched a low cost, integrated, cloud mail and archive service. This first locally hosted secure messaging collaboration suite offers e-mail functionality, collaboration and archiving on a single platform.
“As South African businesses are now at the main-stream stage of cloud adoption, we wanted to create a competitive offering that could meet specific requirements in terms of compliance, and offer a compelling alternative to other local and global e-mail and management solutions,” explains Wayne Speechly, executive for communication services at IS.
“This integrated cloud mail solution does just that, by offering a single platform for collaboration, e-mail, security and archiving, at the lowest possible price. A best-in-class, punitive, end-to-end service level agreement (SLA) also ensures enterprise-grade service, with a guarantee of 99,9% uptime and the assurance that company e-mail is appropriately protected from viruses, phishing attacks and spam.”
Yossi Hasson, MD of Synaq, says the two companies were able to bring a product of this nature to market through their combined expertise and close working relationship.
“After IS acquired a majority stake in Synaq in 2011 we were better positioned to bridge the gap between the application and the network layer during development,” he explains.
“We then combined the experience we’d gained in the nine years since deploying the first open source SaaS e-mail security platform and in processing over 1-billion e-mails a month for more than 300 000 users, with IS’ expertise, experience and capabilities in terms of infrastructure provisioning.
“As such, we delivered a solution that boasts all the functionality and capabilities businesses expect of a feature-rich messaging and archive suite, but at a far more competitive price point.”
The software-as-a-service offering is delivered over IS’ network infrastructure, which is assessed, maintained and supported with proactive monitoring, routine preventative maintenance checks and a dedicated support desk.
“The integrated multi-purpose platform also negates the risk of data integration corruption, which is common with disparate e-mail and archiving solutions,” adds Speechly.
The integrated cloud mail solution offers a spam-free 25Gb mailbox, shared calendaring and contacts, global address lists, individual distribution lists, file storage, conversation views, and native archiving. Ten years of free unlimited storage archiving ensures businesses are able to move towards ECT compliance without incurring additional costs.
The solution is compatible with all popular mail clients, most common of which is Outlook. It is also platform independent, which means it can be accessed via any popular Web client. Mobile push technology, including full Blackberry Enterprise Server integration, which enables greater workforce mobility, is included at no cost.
“All of these features and functionality are now available at a cost of just R49 per user, per month, excluding VAT. This significantly lowers the total cost of ownership of a hosted messaging collaboration suite of this kind, as most other providers charge between R110-140 per user. It is even more affordable than Google’s e-mail and archiving solution, which costs $10 per user,” says Hasson.