When it comes right down to it, virtually all messaging-management functions are nothing more than a collection of policies that are custom tailored to a particular organization. For example, an organization's decision about what types of e-mail it will accept and which it considers spam is really based on internal policies: a medical practice, for example, will be more likely to accept e-mail that includes the names of body parts than will a financial services company. Similarly, the types of e-mail that an organization will retain for long periods, how long they will retain them, which content must be encrypted before being sent, etc., are all based on policies that an organization has established, either explicitly or implicitly.

To address messaging management based on policies, IntelliReach recently introduced its mx2020 offering, a comprehensive messaging management system.  Mx2020 provides a single point of management for managing e-mails entering or leaving an organization by allowing the creation of policies from a single administrative interface. 

For example, using this interface, an e-mail can be processed using a variety of policies that determine, among other things, whether the message should be passed through to the recipient or quarantined based on its content; whether or not the message should be retained because of its content, recipient or sender and, if so, for how long it should be retained; and whether the message should be encrypted based on a variety of factors. In essence, mx2020 provides a way for an organization to bring together all of its policies regarding the disposition of e-mail into a single management interface. The system comes with a collection of pre-made policies and allows organizations to create as many additional policies as it needs.

Back in the "old" days, all you needed was a good anti-virus capability in front of your e-mail server to protect your organization and users. Then along came the need to manage spam, then came the need for good archiving and retention practices, then came along spyware and encrypted messaging and other needs. As a result of the increasing number of requirements for processing e-mail, Osterman Research has found that most organizations want an integrated management system that allows them to manage all of these capabilities from a single interface.  For organizations that need or want to do so, mx2020 is certainly worth a serious look.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.