MessageLabs Launches Email Continuity Service

MessageLabs, a provider of integrated messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide,announced the availability of its Email Continuity service, a fully integrated, user-controlled solution that eliminates email downtime, stops any loss of productivity and ensures the integrity of email communications even in the event of an email outage.

The MessageLabs Email Continuity service further enhances the complete suite of fully managed email and web security solutions offered on MessageLabs Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. The Email Continuity service is a fully integrated, easily deployable and scalable solution designed to provide a reliable back-up email system with the same multi-layered security that is built into MessageLabs other email and web security service offerings. In the event of an email outage, since the back up system is constantly running the user activates access for the appropriate departments or individuals via the phone or web and the users can continue to use email as normal.

"In a recent survey, Osterman Research found that 48% of decision makers consider email continuity and disaster recovery to be a serious or very serious problem for their organizations", said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research. "Enterprises with the best business continuity and disaster recovery practices have an understanding of the costs associated with business process outages — the cost of even a single outage can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and can cause a number of other problems for an organization."

MessageLabs Email Continuity service gives users the control to activate their back-up system based on which parts of the organization have been affected and assign priority to which systems are synchronized back to Exchange. The retention option sends the back-up system an encrypted copy of every email sent or received while the primary system is in normal operation, a safeguard to data loss and a critical part of an organization’s overall business continuity strategy.

“Email is a mission-critical business service and any interruption to it can be costly not only in lost revenue and productivity, but also in damage to an organization’s reputation and external relationships,” said Jonathan Gale, Vice President of Product Management, MessageLabs. “Email continuity is about business without interruption, ensuring the proper systems are in place to provide seamless access to data and blink-of-an-eye recovery all with the flip of a switch at a low, predictable cost.”

Features and Benefits of the Email Continuity Service
The MessageLabs Email Continuity Service ensures full functionality of the Outlook client, web and BlackBerry servers when an outage occurs and is scalable to an organizations size and business needs. Key features include:

• Rapid activation within a minute, providing all employees email and mobile access during an outage making it invisible to employees and external contacts
• Access to critical email functionality, via Outlook, web browser and wireless devices during exchange outages for seamless access and minimized disruption to maintain productivity
• Automatic synchronization, of corporate directories, user accounts, contacts, calendars and distribution lists to bypass manual maintenance involved with providing users uninterrupted data access
• One-step quick recovery and restoration, of sent and received email data to the primary system
• All messages restored to Exchange, with complete forensic information, after primary system outage to guard against data loss or bounced messages during outage
• Reduction in demand on bandwidth, with just one copy of any email sent to multiple recipients stored in back-up system
• 24/7 support and advice, from dedicated MessageLabs experts and a predictable low monthly fee with no need for hardware, storage capacity or disk recovery systems