John Katsaros

Can You Keep A Secret?

IronPort's recent announcement of its acquisition of e-mail encryption specialist PostX comes at an interesting time.  For years, e-mail encryption companies have been knocking on enterprise doors but not getting much interest.  Combining e-mail encryption within an IronPort edge appliance is a good idea -- IronPort has a substantial installed base and has the capability to conveniently package PostX functionality to gain user adoption.  Plus, it gives IronPort more product functionality to sell to its installed base, always a good idea.  Interestingly, Microsoft's Exchange 2007 is also trying to make headway with secure mail functionality by offering opportunistic TLS encryption as part of its new edge functionality.  While these are "apples and oranges" security methods, the big question for IronPort is whether it can substantially gain adoption of its new PostX functionality ahead of the deployment of Exchange 2007.  But it may just be that the biggest obstacle to e-mail encryption -- user convenience -- is being solved by re-packaging the solution as a function of the edge.

Sendmail Turns 25

Normally you would expect that going to a vendor sponsored weekday reception would be a pretty boring affair but last week's Sendmail birthday party at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View turned out to be a lot of fun. Part of the fun was that the party was filled with Geeks who are a lot more interesting to talk to than corporate marketing types.  But the highlight of the evening was when Sendmail creator, Eric Allman gave his "History of Internet Mail 1960 -- 2040" talk which more or less reminded all of us how fast things have changed in just a short period of time (and that there is still a lot of change on the horizon.)  Plus, his dry sense of humor had everyone rolling in their seats.