Messaging Architects Announces the Purchase of NetMail and the Hula Project - FAQs
Q. Specifically what is Messaging Architects buying from Novell?
From January 30, 2007 onwards, Messaging Architects will own all of the associated Intellectual Property, including full copyright and all trademarks for NetMail and the Myrealbox.com public email server. In addition, leadership of the Hula open source project is being assigned to Messaging Architects.
Q. Will Messaging Architects continue to develop new versions of NetMail?
Yes. The company plans to release a new version towards the end of September 2007, and a preview will be demonstrated during the BrainShare 2007 conference. Many of the original developers of NetMail are now working as part of the Messaging Architects engineering team. The new version of NetMail will certainly include the many enhancements developed for M+Guardian: application-layer clustering, dynamic load-balancing, automatic failover, and virtualization support. A roadmap for the new version (M+NetMail) will be released later this week by Messaging Architects at www.messagingarchitects.com/netmail.
Q. Is Novell dropping support of NetMail for current customers?
No, all current NetMail clients with current upgrade protection or maintenance contracts will continue to be 100% supported directly by Novell until the expiration of their contracts. When clients are ready to upgrade to the newest version of NetMail, they will then have the option of entering into a support agreement with Messaging Architects. If clients wish to renew maintenance on their current version, they will be allowed to do this directly with Messaging Architects.
Q. Will current users have to pay for the upgrade?
No, all NetMail customers who have valid Novell upgrade protection or maintenance contracts will be entitled to receive the upgrade at no charge.
Q. Will Novell continue to sell NetMail?
Novell will continue to include NetMail as part of its ALA and SLA bundles for the educational market. These bundles will include the new version of the product when it is released by Messaging Architects. Novell will provide first-level support for these customers as part of their overall support agreement with Novell; however Messaging Architects will assist Novell whenever required. All new non-educational clients will need to purchase NetMail directly from Messaging Architects.
Q. Will Messaging Architects keep the Myrealbox public email server live?
Yes. Myrealbox is a wonderful demonstration of the power and scalability of the NetMail engine. M+Guardian will be installed in front of the Myrealbox server, ensuring that users' mailboxes are 100% spam-, virus-, spyware- and adware-free. Messaging Architects will enhance the storage capacity offered and accept new accounts registration once additional storage and certain hardware updates are performed. We will also offer automated mailbox search and indexing capabilities toward the latter part of 2007.
Q. I've heard about M+Guardian, is this Hula?
No, M+Guardian does derive from the Hula codebase, but it is not an Email Server. Messaging Architects engineering team leveraged the speed and scalability of the SMTP engine inside Hula to develop its next generation, policy-based, adaptive email firewall. It integrates natively with eDirectory and is capable of scanning upwards of 1.5 million messages per day on commodity hardware. The next version of NetMail will incorporate many of the innovative features developed for M+Guardian.
Q. So is it safe to assume that M+Guardian is the next version of NetMail?
We have a lot of work to do before shipping the next version of NetMail. However, we strongly encourage all current NetMail users to install M+Guardian as it will provide them with an advanced preview of the many enhancements which we have made to the NetMail engines in terms of speed, security, robustness and scalability. All of these will be ported to the NetMail product which will ship in September 2007.
Q. Does Novell plan to use M+Guardian internally?
Yes, Novell has been using GWGuardian as its only perimeter defense against email borne virus and spam threats for over 3 years now. M+Guardian raises the performance level even higher in terms of speed and eDirectory integration. Novell plans to transition over to M+Guardian in the very near future.
Q. Will M+Guardian be integrated with NetMail or Hula?
No. Although M+Guardian is based on the Hula project, it contains a number of proprietary email filtering technologies that cannot be open-sourced if they are to remain effective deterrents against spammers and other malicious attacks. Depending on market developments, Messaging Architects may decide to include some of the components it developed for M+Guardian (e.g. greylisting and protocol filtering) as part of a future version of NetMail.
Q. Will Messaging Architects maintain the current work that has been done on Hula?
The Hula project still requires a significant amount of work before it can be used as a mail server. Over the next few weeks the Messaging Architects team will accept suggestions from the community on how to best reach this objective while not discarding some of the innovative engineering work that was done on the user interfaces. We will provide the link where you can submit your feedback in the coming weeks.
Q. I am a NetMail user; where can I call or e-mail if I have additional questions?
All NetMail users can send their questions or concerns via email to netmail@messagingarchitects.com or call the NetMail hotline at +1-514-392-9220 ext. 788. We invite NetMail user to register with Messaging Architects so that we can ensure you are promptly informed of all product developments. A special web page has been created at www.messagingarchitects.com/netmail for this purpose.
Q. What operating system(s) will the new version of NetMail run on?
The new version of NetMail (M+NetMail) will be shipped and supported on Novell's SLES and on Open SUSE. It should also run on other Linux Kernels but Messaging Architects will only certify the aforementioned OS platforms.
Q. If I want to transition my NetMail system from NetWare to Linux, what migration tools or assistance will be available?
It is still early for us to release formal plans regarding NetWare to Linux migration tools. What we can say is that the next version of NetMail will guarantee 100% message and calendar store compatibility, ensuring that users will not looe any information stored in their NetMail systems.
Q: What if I intend to continue running NetMail and GroupWise simultaneously? How will support and integration be handled?
All of the current product features that enable intelligent co-habitation of NetMail and GroupWise will be carried forward into new versions and wherever possible we will improve the interoperability of both systems. We plan to leverage our experience in developing solutions for GroupWise and our strong partnership with the GroupWise product engineering team to make both products work better together.
