SMX takes email servers to the cloud with Openwave Messaging partnership
Auckland, New Zealand. 23 July 2013. New Zealand-owned cloud email hosting and security company SMX Limited says the signing of a global partnership
agreement with Openwave Messaging provides the final technology elements required to offer a world-leading cloud email
hosting capability to customers in New Zealand and around the world.
“The partnership with Openwave Messaging, and our implementation of their Universal Messaging SuiteTM Email Mx messaging
platform, gives us a fully scalable, enterprise-strength solution for customers who want to move their email servers to
the cloud,” says SMX co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Thom Hooker.
“That means 99.999 percent availability, as well as enterprise-ready tools such as shared calendars, online data storage
with Dropbox, global address books and support for ActiveSync to sync contacts, emails and calendars with mobile
devices,” Hooker says.
SMX’s Vice President of Global Sales, Tiaan Blaauw, says email hosting is fully integrated into the SMX Cloud Email
Hosting & Security Suite, offering the same ease of use as provided by Google’s Gmail and Microsoft 365 but with important
advantages for resellers and end-user customers.
“Our message is very clear: we will compete strongly on price, coupled with superior customer service. That means more
generous margins for resellers than offered by Google’s Gmail and Microsoft 365. It also means better value for end
customers who – at no price penalty – can get a flexible range of business email services depending on their needs, with
the services priced accordingly,” Blaauw says.
“The SMX Cloud Email Hosting & Security Suite is designed so it can be very quickly and easily configured according to the specific requirements of
end customers. That means an enterprise-strength, fully-hosted email solution for larger companies and organizations,
with state-of-the-art email security and management features, down to a robust email filtering service for smaller
customers.
“Our feedback from customers and our market partners and resellers is clear and consistent. They want a highly secure
and highly accurate hosted email cloud service. But they also want it to be locally hosted and locally serviced. And
they want it to be quick and easy to deploy and easy to manage,” Blaauw says.
“The new enhancements to our service strengthen our ability to deliver on all of these requirements. Increasingly
important – particularly in New Zealand, Australia and Japan – is that we deploy in the customer's own country. This
means no risk of international connectivity issues leaving customers without access to their data. It means response
times are much quicker. And it means customer data is not subject to foreign laws and jurisdictions because their data
doesn't leave their home territory.”
Thom Hooker says the added capabilities provided by integrating Openwave follow other recent enhancements to the SMX
Cloud Email Security Suite. These include a major redevelopment of the SMX SmartRules® module – SmartRules® DLP – which
uses sophisticated data loss prevention algorithms to protect sensitive corporate data from being emailed outside of a
customer organization.
Also important, he says, is SMX’s implementation of the Cassandra Distributed Database platform: “Originally developed
and 'open sourced' by Facebook but now part of the Apache stable of open source products, - the Cassandra Distributed
Database platform enables industry-leading data security for customer emails with seamless failover to another rack or
data-center in the event of failure. This enables SMX to guarantee 100 percent availability of customer emails.”
“The Cassandra Distributed Database platform also underlies SMX's reporting and customer management platform, allowing
us to manage market partners, distributors, resellers and customers from the same interface. This includes provisioning
and billing of new services as well as extensive user-level reporting for each active service,” Hooker says.
Hooker says the major new features and capabilities of the SMX service have been accelerated by funding from Callaghan
Innovation, the Crown entity formed to foster technology innovation.
-Ends-
About SMX Limited
SMX is a technology leader in email security and hosting delivered via the cloud model. The company’s SMX Cloud Email
Security Suite provides a fully-hosted, enterprise-grade business email service with highly sophisticated data loss
prevention features, as well as local in-country hosting delivering 99.999 percent clean email, with 100 percent email
server availability. SMX has an expanding blue chip list of over 200 resellers and market partners throughout the Asia
Pacific region with managed sites across New Zealand, Australia, India and Japan. Major local and international market
partners include Fujitsu Australia & New Zealand, Revera and CCL in New Zealand, CMC in India (a subsidiary of the giant Tata Group), and in Japan, Mitsui
and KVH. SMX is a privately-owned company based in Auckland, New Zealand with sales and support staff on the ground in
Australia and Japan. www.smxemail.com/
About Openwave Messaging
Openwave Messaging is the leading global provider of innovative messaging software solutions. Openwave Messaging’s
Universal Messaging Suite™ provides a powerful, open and flexible, complete messaging environment optimized for today’s
most complex messaging requirements, including millions of mailboxes, security controls, identity management, and ease
of integration with internal systems and external partners. Leveraging its strong history of messaging “firsts,”
Openwave Messaging is dedicated to helping its customers maintain business continuity and lower their business risk.
Customers include industry-leading communications service providers, including several of the largest global broadband
providers. For more information, please visit www.owmessaging.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter @owMessaging