Background
Acting as a central facility to provide services to its 18 component schools, Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES)'s mission is to provide these services while keeping costs down.
The Jefferson-Lewis BOCES NetMail messaging system has been in place for more than 11 years and supports 570 teachers and staff on two campuses. BOCES recently moved to M+NetMail, based on the positive experience it had working with M+Guardian. M+NetMail and M+Guardian combine to give BOCES the streamlined, secure, spam-free messaging system it needs.
M+Guardian: Secure, Spam-Free, and Solid Support
Nyle Landas, Technology Coordinator for Jefferson-Lewis BOCES, deployed M+Guardian to protect his system after the anti-spam product he was using at the time was acquired by another company. The result was a dramatic deterioration in support which in turn led him to look for alternative.
Since deploying M+Guardian, Landas has been pleased with both the superior spam catch rates and the ease of administration. A key feature is M+Guardian's zero-hour anti-virus technology. This process proactively scans the Internet and identifies virus outbreaks the instant they appear and before security vendors make their signature updates. This closes the early-hours vulnerability gap when many systems get infected.
“The zero-day virus-check was a big deal for us,” says Landas. “Before there were viruses sneaking through; now M+Guardian is catching all those.”
Jefferson-Lewis' end users get regular quarantine reports and are able manage their own block and safe lists without requiring administration from the IT staff.
Landas also praises the level of client care he receives from Messaging Architects: “Messaging Architects' support engineers are phenomenal. They are quick to respond and they've been able to help me through any problems I've had."
M+NetMail: Standards-Based, Streamlined, and Stable
The reason Jefferson-Lewis BOCES started using NetMail years ago was they needed a streamlined messaging product that was easy to use, regardless of the technical skills of the user. When Messaging Architects announced it was taking over NetMail, Landas saw the transition as a positive step in the evolution of the product.
"I've always had a really great experience using M+Guardian,” he says. “So, when I found out Messaging Architects was taking over NetMail and continuing to develop it, I was quite pleased.”
The team working on M+NetMail includes many of the same Novell people who had worked on the NetMail code, and they are committed to an open-standards approach to messaging and calendaring.
"Messaging Architects is committed to open standards,' continues Landas. "That's where I want to see the industry go."
For Landas, M+NetMail's two strongest attributes are stability and ease of back-up: "It's very stable - it runs itself, really. As far as back-ups go, all you have to do is back up the data directories, no need for custom clients."
Landas is pleased to see M+NetMail evolving along with his user base. His users are particularly looking forward to the calendaring features and the new Web interface in the upcoming version of M+NetMail.
The Bottomline: A robust, secure, and extremely cost-effective messaging infrastructure
"Using M+Netmail and M+Guardian have enabled Jefferson-Lewis BOCES to provide our users at the 18 schools we support a robust, secure, and extremely cost-effective messaging infrastructure," concludes Landas.
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