PostPath Corporate Backgrounder

Introduction

PostPath has created the only Linux-based email server to deliver drop-in compatibility with Microsoft Exchange™ and the rest of the existing email ecosystem. For PostPath, compatibility with the existing email infrastructure is a core capability that is reflected in the design and architecture of our entire email server. We think you will understand why we call it "email evolved."

II. Vision for Email and Collaboration

Be Compatible. Lower costs. Reduce complexity. Increase innovation.
Email is crucial for all organizations. As the primary communication tool, email is also coming under more regulation (SOX, HIPPA, and eDiscovery rules), more frequent attack (malware, virus, spam, phishing, physical attack), and must function within a demanding environment that includes a wide variety of other devices and applications that include VoIP, mobile devices, and other web-based applications.

The cost and complexity of implementing email in a demanding and hostile environment has become more daunting. Costs seem to always be rising, innovation seems to have stalled, and genuine advances have become few and far between. As a result IT professionals have begun demanding a system that meets the following needs:

At the same time, enterprises find themselves unable to move away from Exchange™ due in large part to the "compatibility lock" that Microsoft® has established over the email and collaboration infrastructure. The PostPath Server™ breaks open this lock, thanks to its unique drop-in compatibility. It solves the core problems with existing enterprise email infrastructure and opens the infrastructure to next-generation collaborative innovation.

III. Market Opportunity

PostPath addresses the three to four-billion dollar corporate messaging server-software market. Of that market, Microsoft Exchange holds a market share of roughly 60% and growing.

The PostPath Server was built with the understanding that email has become the dominant communication and collaboration mechanism for organizations around the world. Similarly, Outlook™ and its rich feature set, including shared calendaring, are key ingredients on the corporate desktop. Native compatibility with Outlook's rich feature set is mandatory for most enterprise deployments, as is demonstrated by the falling market share of non-native Outlook solutions.

The Exchange™ Route to Complexity and Cost

Most organizations make their initial deployment of an Exchange Server™ in response to user or business demands for native Outlook compatibility. Having set off down this path, enterprises are forced in perpetuity to add Exchange-compatible systems (including additional Exchange servers within existing Exchange farms) to their infrastructure, ensuring the compatibility lock grows tighter and tighter over time.

As the organization deploys and attempts to grow its Exchange environment, numerous Exchange related weaknesses, dependencies, and limitations are exposed. When this pressure to bring their infrastructure into regulatory compliance, to control the infrastructure's cost, and to add new innovations to the infrastructure occurs, costs can rise dramatically as Exchange struggles to keep pace. As a result, an entire industry of companies has grown up attempting to "patch" the Exchange infrastructure and keep it operating. These third-party tools are generally complex and expensive. They also add support and administrative overhead as well as costs in design and deployment. In general, they provide some help with the issues, but they cannot address the root-causes within Exchange.

Seeking a Better Way

As organizations come to face-to-face with the sheer cost and complexity of attempting to build a scalable, fault-tolerant, and compliant messaging and collaboration infrastructure around Exchange™, they have started seeking more flexible, reliable, and cost-effective alternatives, alternatives that would allow them to migrate gradually away from Exchange without sacrificing compatibility with the rest of their infrastructure. Now, for the first time, there is an email and collaboration server the PostPath Server™ with the drop-in compatibility that enables an organization to gradually move away from Exchange without the risk of sacrificing their current investment, while they provide the benefits of a superior architecture.

IV. Features and Benefits

The technology developed by PostPath delivers on the requirement to achieve compatibility and meet efficient, flexible and low-cost infrastructure goals without compromising on openness and innovation.

Compatibility

Compatibility at the network level is achieved by understanding both the documented and undocumented Microsoft Exchange™ network protocols and then implementing them in a Linux framework. Supporting these Exchange-compatible network protocols at the server sets the PostPath Server apart from all other non-Microsoft solutions.

From a customer perspective, the effect of network-level protocol support is native-mode interoperability with clients and infrastructure designed to work with Exchange, including Outlook™ and Outlook's advanced feature set, Active Directory™ and Active Directory tools, ecosystem applications like Blackberry Enterprise Gateway™, and Microsoft Exchange™ servers.

So, for instance, a user running an unmodified version of Outlook can attach to the PostPath Server and pull up the free-busy information of another user even if that other user is being hosted on Exchange. Of course, one effect of this level of interoperability is to enable gradual trial and adoption of the PostPath Server, there is no need for a rapid cut-over and enterprises can migrate at their own pace.

Lean Infrastructure

Lean infrastructure means high performance on lower cost hardware using standard tools. The ability to create a lean infrastructure comes from an efficient server architecture combined with the use of standard interfaces to avoid proprietary closed-box components. In particular, the PostPath Server is designed to leverage Linux and Linux-mountable filing systems for storage, rather than to rely on the closed Jet database used in Exchange.

The benefits of lean infrastructure are substantial and include the ability to use lower cost server hardware or consolidate existing machines, reduce overhead and maintenance, increase reliability thanks to reduced infrastructure complexity, save money on storage costs and/or to eliminate client PST files by providing additional server-side mailbox storage, the ability to use simple low cost tools for backup and restore, and enable the use of standard components for virus filtering, archiving, disaster recovery and business continuity support.

Innovation

Innovation has not been a term associated with email servers for some time now. It is hardly surprising that innovation has slowed given the fact that a single vendor has held a compatibility lock over the email ecosystem. Yet the pressure for innovation is building as IT professionals and users demand greater flexibility and new approaches, whether AJAX web-clients, CalDAV open-standards clients, MTA-filters or any of the growing array of applications that leverage open source and open standards. 

The PostPath Server delivers on compatibility, on lean infrastructure, and on innovation. The result is an email and collaboration server that responds to IT's demand for a system that is more reliable, higher performance, less expensive to operate, and more open.

V. Breaking the Compatibility Lock

When Outlook™, Active Directory, Exchange ecosystem applications like Blackberry Enterprise Server and Sharepoint, and other Exchange servers communicate with Exchange, they use the Exchange network protocols. Absent Exchange network protocols, these applications either will not interoperate with a server at all, or will operate with reduced functionality.

Although Microsoft releases certain relevant technical information about Exchange, they have never chosen to fully document the Exchange network protocols, and so there has never been an alternative email server that supported these protocols. As a result, for the majority of enterprises, there has been no choice but to buy Exchange in order to provide support for required applications and infrastructure. The requirement for Exchange network protocol support has served to lock many enterprises, who might otherwise have considered alternatives, to Microsoft Exchange.

In order to break open the compatibility lock, PostPath has decoded and implemented the Exchange network protocols, creating a server that drops-in to existing infrastructure without disruption, allowing existing applications and servers to interoperate seamlessly and without loss of functionality.
In particular:

VI. Other Linux/Unix Email Servers

Many of the issues with Exchange are widely understood within the industry. As a result, a number of companies have sought to deliver Unix or Linux email servers for the enterprise. These solutions can be good products in their own right, but were not developed from the ground up to deliver the kind of compatibility that is really required to produce a viable option for the enterprise. Instead, they must "patch" other applications in order to work. This common approach to compatibility includes installing a plug-in on every desktop.

Unfortunately, the plug-in has to be deployed everywhere, has to be updated frequently, and does little or nothing to ensure compatibility with Active Directory™, Exchange™ ecosystem, and already-deployed Exchange™ servers. The plug-in also tends to restrict Outlook functionality significantly, because many Outlook features are not provided via the plug-in APIs nor is their operation with other components of the infrastructure. Sensibly, the vendors of these products sometimes choose to emphasize non-Outlook clients, whether browser-based web-mail or an alternate "thick" client.

While the plug-in approach can find its place in organizations where Microsoft compatibility is not very important, or where only a small minority use Outlook, and while webmail can work well for ISPs, consumer email, and for some small businesses, for a typical Exchange-based enterprise plug-ins fall far short of what is required for successful migration and co-existence. One of the opportunities PostPath presents to customers is the ability to progress to a more heterogeneous client environment. We do not expect most enterprises to give-up Outlook, but we do make it much more practical to support a range of clients if desired.

VII. Conclusion

PostPath remains the only company to have decoded and implemented the Exchange™ network protocols. The PostPath Server is the only non-Microsoft server to deliver drop-in compatibility with existing Microsoft® clients and infrastructure. Consequently, PostPath is the only practical Exchange™ alternative for the majority of enterprises using mainstream infrastructures.