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Thoughts on Eating Our Own Caviar … and Boomerang Mail Servers

For many IT departments, the decision to go or not go with hosted email hinges on trust. Can the organization trust the provider to give the system the same care an attention that internal IT people would? I didn't want Messaging Architects to offer a hosted email service unless I could be confident the answer would be, "Yes — and more."

The first step in that direction was for Messaging Architects to move our own GroupWise system onto the same virtualized infrastructure in the same datacenter (Rackspace) that we would be providing to our hosted clients. I am pleased to announce that this transition is done and we are running all our systems on a custom-designed, fully virtualized server stack at Rackspace. We learned a ton in the process, and these lessons have been integrated into a smart, simple, and secure migration methodology. The goal is to make it easy for clients to move from a physical onsite infrastructure to a virtualized and hosted one.

Contrary to other hosted email providers, we decided that each client would get their own 100%-dedicated, virtualized server stack. Unlike other hosting providers that mix your email with that of hundreds of other companies on mega servers, we provide each client a fully isolated server. This service is not meant for small companies (we start at 350 users and up) and it is certainly a more expensive approach for us, but we think it is the right way to build a flexible service.

I always had a problem with providers that hold your data hostage and make it difficult or impossible to get it back. We chose to make it very easy to take your servers back in-house. Since each client has their own set of virtual machines, we can return the entire virtual framework — data and apps — back over to your organization in less than 24 hours. Just like you hope your adult children will never move back in, we hope you’ll never want your servers back … but if you do, then we make it both possible and painless.

Our unique approach also means the system can still leverage your organization's rich, on-site infrastructure such as eDirectory and Identity Manager (enabling provisioning, single sign-on, etc.). There's also transparent integration with enterprise apps that either remain onsite (CRM, HR) or might be hosted elsewhere (Salesforce). None of this is possible with other hosted offerings.

Of course, with Rackspace as a partner, we have access to world-class, 24 x 7 protection against power failure and equipment malfunction, as well as built-in redundancies on servers and network connectivity. Our custom engineering is designed to spread the virtual stack across multiple physical servers, each with point-in-time backup and restore. All data transmissions are over secure HTTPS connections.

We are accepting our first round of clients now, and we will go big in early 2010. The service includes GroupWise 8 and the combination of M+Archive and M+Guardian. The result is a risk-free, zero-effort email infrastructure that can grow with your organization — and perhaps even move back in one day ;-).

— Frederic Bourget, Messaging Architects VP of Technology & Solutions

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.