* Profile of Gordano Messaging Suite
Although about 85% of enterprise users employ Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes/Domino or Novell GroupWise as their primary messaging system, there are lots of other choices available for enterprise users. One such system is the Gordano Messaging Suite (GMS), which has about 54 million users and 20,000 customers worldwide.
GMS works with any POP3/SMTP- or IMAP4/SMTP-enabled messaging system, meaning it can be used in conjunction with any of the leading messaging servers and clients. Gordano does not offer a client for use with GMS, but it can be used with any of the newer Web browsers.
GMS offers both server-side and client-side spam filtering. It uses commonly employed blacklists and other first-generation spam-filtering techniques, but it also uses keyword detection and sender confirmation to combat spam.
The latter technique allows a GMS user to configure the system so that a customized message is sent to any e-mail sender who is not already in one of the recipient’s address books. Once the sender replies to the message sent by the GMS user, that sender is automatically added to the user’s address book and will not receive a challenge again. If the sender does not reply to the challenge, as would be the case if a sender were actually a spammer, the message would simply be kept in quarantine.
Although the current version of this confirmation feature is sender-specific, the next release of GMS will allow wildcards to be used so that entire domains can automatically be accepted without challenge.
GMS also has an instant messaging component that provides only basic instant messaging functionality and no interoperability with other instant messaging systems. However, a nice feature of the instant messaging component is that it automatically sends a log of each instant messaging session to the participants’ inbox.
Another key feature of GMS is its low price, particularly in large enterprise environments. For example, the 10,000-seat price for GMS and the Webmail, instant messaging, calendaring and antispam components is only $2.28 per user, far less than many of Gordano’s competitors.
