ColdSpark is a leading developer of enterprise-grade e-mail platforms, the newest of which is the company’s SparkEngine 6.0. The company’s focus is on developing very high performance systems that replace Message Transfer Agent (MTA) technology with open platform-based technology that offers high throughput, intelligent routing of messages, more granular policy management and other benefits.

For example, SparkEngine 6.0 can process 2 million messages per hour, well above the performance of most MTAs currently on the market. SparkEngine 6.0 also provides an open architecture that allows the development of a variety of third-party applications to be integrated into the platform and permits the use of granular policies and routing for different types of users in an organization.

The platform also offers virtualization (or what ColdSpark calls 'lanes of traffic') that permits messages to be processed differently based on the needs of different user groups. For example, messages sent to or from one group of users can be run through a different set of policy engines, filters and other systems than messages for another group. This not only permits very high throughput of messages, but also allow customization of message management.

Among the other benefits provided by SparkEngine are its ability to dramatically reduce the number of legacy application servers in use, the ability to unify SMTP management, and the ability to offer an enterprise a Service Oriented Architecture approach to managing its e-mail infrastructure.

ColdSpark offers an interesting technology approach to improving messaging system performance for several reasons. It is an open platform for which developers can create new features and functions quite readily. It allows very high performance, which is critical for a variety of industries, particularly those that send enormous volumes of e-mail in a short amount of time, such as those that send information to customers or consumers. The 'lanes of traffic' approach to message management is another important benefit that allows much more granular management of content while maintaining high throughput.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.