Better Than Ironport

It's been a looooong time since I've posted here; I have a single post on the DHTML renaissance that's clogging up my pipeline. It is almost done, and the moment it is I'll post it here so I can catch up to May 2005 June 2005 July 2005!

In the meantime, lately I've been playing with a enterprise-grade MTA that IMHO is better than Ironport in terms of price, scalability, reliability, and most important -- flexibility: it can be scripted with Perl or PHP to connect with other systems seamlessly. Super sweet!!

I highly recommend Ecelerity as an email application server that blows the roof off IronPort at a fraction of the cost. See this comment for more information about why I'm so passionate about this product.

Thanks to the Ecelerity server, email sucks less, and that puts a big smile on my face.

If you want an intro to them, feel free to contact me.

Comments

[Elizabeth Yow]

Honestly, it took me a second to see the bold link in Bloglines and think "now who is this person and why do I subscribe to their blog again? ... Oh yeah, it's Rifkin." Heh.

[Adam]

"Oh yeah, it's Rifkin" answers the first question but not the second... ;)

[Elizabeth Yow]

True, but I'm not sure that question really CAN be answered. :O

[Adam]

Good point.

So rather than mumble on, let me add some more details about why I'm so passionate about Ecelerity.

The Ecelerity engine is instrumented with an extension API that allows augmenting or changing the logic run at almost every phase of a message's life-cycle, with callouts for both mainstream life events like message reception, delivery, and queuing, and engine-internal callouts.

Much more than a filtering mechanism, the extension API allows deep engine changes, like the following real-world applications, all built using the API:

1. Perform real-time, direct to database logging for adding real-time message delivery information to CRM systems.
   

2. Add Saleforce.com integration -- for example, to automatically scan every mail that passes through the system, and attach any messages to or from someone in your Salesforce.com contact database as a note to their account.
   

3. Build email APIs for blogging systems, including email-based submit, and email-based comments. Very cool.
   

4. Augment a CRM system to perform text analysis on all inbound messages, associate emails with users, and prepend a formatted block of user account details to the top of the mail, for reducing customer service time costs.
   

5. Perform recipient validation or SMTP AUTH off existing databases (for instance, SMTP AUTH based off your php.net cvs password on the php.net mail systems).

By having this logic run inside Ecelerity (as opposed to using an external process), there are many benefits:

1. Performance. One of the primary performance costs in many email systems is having to pass data off to external processes for validation, and pull the response back. Running SpamAssassin embedded in Ecelerity shows a 50x performance improvement over running SpamAssassin via qmail.
   

2. Data sharing. One of the main benefits of running code inside the engine as opposed to in an external process is that you can share data with other applications running inside the engine. As a case in point, in the CRM example discussed above you may want to change the anti-spam settings if you identify the sender as a valid customer.
   

3. Simplicity. Ecelerity supports writing extensions in C, C++, Java, and Perl, with PHP in beta and .NET later in Q4 2005. The Ecelerity hooking system provides easy access to the data structures and functionality necessary to write email-based applications quickly.
   

4. Running at protocol time. By executing logic on the message during the SMTP transaction, you have the ability to make decisions on messages and execute action before fully accepting them. This drastically reduces the problems with backscatter (receiving bounces for mails sent from fraudulent senders), and ensures all actions take place in real time.

There are some very cool interactive demos of how this all works, with a small amount of code (one example I saw was under 150 lines of PHP, with comments) that runs inside of Ecelerity and is called out to automatically by the hooking mechanism.

Contact me if you want to learn more...

[Elizabeth Yow]

I don't know whether that answered the second question for me. There's a lot there that I didn't really understand. :O

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

Keep talkin'. I wanna hear more! ;)

[Tim Converse]

Wow, Adam, just after you say you're going to tell us why you're so passionate about ecelerity your writing style, like, totally changes. It suddenly becomes very un-Rifkinesque, and is full of technical details and also reads kind of like technical marketing collateral. That is so cool the way you can change styles on a dime like that.

[Adam]

Tim, you are right, I have become... The MailMan!!!

[Tim Converseq]

Adam, when you become The Mailman, is it like you have multiple personalities? or maybe, like, a secret superhero identity? Or is it more like pasting in text that someone else wrote and then acting like you wrote it yourself?

[Adam]

Could the answer to all three questions be yes?

[Tim Converse]

Absolutely, if you feel comfy saying three things (at the same time): 1) I have multiple-personality disorder, 2) I'm a superhero, 3) I'm a plagiarist.

[Email Security Appliances]

Email Security Appliances
IronPort's is the leader of the e-mail security appliance market.