LiveOffice Launches Web-based Admin for E-discovery

Messaging security, storage and compliance provider LiveOffice Managed Messaging Services April 9 introduced its Sentinel e-mail portal, a web-based administration console that enables organizations to search and retrieve archived messages for e-discovery purposes, while also providing real-time views of inbound threats, e-mail volumes and storage utilization.

LiveOffice's new client portal acts as mission control for Sentinel, putting administrators "just a few clicks away from real-time, graphical views of their entire organization's e-mail activities, from threat levels to archive usage and more," said Matt Smith, CEO and founder of the Torrance, Calif., company.

Sentinel includes Secure Computing's IronMail security software as part of the hosted service, thanks to a recent partnership between the two companies.

"This is the first partnership to offer enterprise messaging security to a broader cross-section of companies that typically would not consider a solution of this caliber - the convenience of a hosted service as well as expertise in a managed solution," Smith said.

Sentinel provides administrators with advanced reporting capabilities, enabling them to instantly create comprehensive snapshots of usage statistics categorized by day, week or month, Smith said.

With Secure Computing's IronMail, LiveOffice's Sentinel platform offers the following services - all of which are also available as standalone packages: spam, virus and phishing protection; advanced search and retrieval features; message encryption; and compliance and policy management capabilities.

IronMail inside Sentinel also provides companies with control of the daily influx of unwanted e-mail messages; rapid setup and deployment (often in under a week) with expertise from LiveOffice; and enterprise-class protection against messaging threats with no upfront investment in hardware, software or maintenance.

Overall, LiveOffice provides ongoing, U.S.-based customer support; and enterprise-class network reliability and security through the company's multi-million-dollar data center infrastructure, Smith said.

For no additional cost, subscribers receive access to LiveOffice's proprietary Client Dashboard, a password-protected, web-based portal that helps businesses manage their own spam and virus filters, Smith said. The interface provides instant access to LiveOffice's Threat Management Dashboard, where messaging threat levels can be monitored and the appropriate action determined.

LiveOffice currently manages millions of messages every day for a number of large financial services companies. Smith told eWEEK the company wants to use the new Sentinel platform to expand its reach into other vertical marketes, including govenment, health care, manufacturing and others.

Companies getting more comfortable with SaaS e-mail model

"In the past, businesses grappled with the challenge of moving to a software as a service model for e-mail management because of concerns over giving up control over the company's most critical communication tool," said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research in Black Diamond, Wash.

"With the launch of the Sentinel client portal, LiveOffice has alleviated the anxiety often associated with outsourcing e-mail management activities and presented companies with an attractive option for threat protection, archiving, encryption and compliance in a single, integrated platform."

According to Secure Computing and the e-mail traffic seen by TrustedSource.org, spam volume was as high as 90 percent of all e-mail in December 2006.

"I think the LiveOffice/Secure Computing agreement is an important step forward for both companies and will help to advance the market in general," Osterman told eWEEK. "The hosted/managed/SaaS model is definitely heating up in a couple of ways:

"First, we are seeing more interest on the part of prospective customers, largely because resistance to the hosted model seems to be waning," Osterman said. "We have been following the market for years and find that the traditional fears about security and providers' financial viability seems to be decreasing, albeit slowly.

"Also, the hosted model used to be focused almost exclusively on the SMB space, but we're seeing interest in the enterprise space as well," Osterman said.

Pricing and availability

The Sentinel online e-mail security service is available now. Antispam/antivirus costs $3 per mailbox/per month, and for archiving search and retrieval, it is also $3 per mailbox/per month. For more information, go here.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International