January 27, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting automation provider Ensim Corporation (ensim) announced today that it has released version3.7 of its Ensim Pro control panel software, featuring new user level spam filteringcapabilities, server level virus scanning and support for the Fedora Linux platform.
Ensim Pro is the latest version of Ensim WEBppliance Pro, an automation solutiondesigned for small Web hosting businesses launched in April 2003 for Linux and in July 2003 for Windows.
“What we are introducing with Ensim Pro is the first software for small hosters thatgive users their own spam control,” Dauber told the Web Host Industry Review. “It isthe first and only software on the market that allows hosters to offer thiscapability to their customers.”
Anti-spam functionality is the latest feature to be added to the Ensim WEBppliancecontrol panel, following the introduction of a virtual private file system and Ensim Power Tools, a solutionfor deploying Web applications.
According to Dauber, the feature was added in order to alleviate the inflexibilityof control panels that typically only offer server-wide settings for spam filtering.Ensim Pro allows users to configure their control panels according to how they wantto handle unsolicited email and lets them determine the “strictness” of thefiltering, creating “whitelists” and “blacklists” of mailers, explained Dauber.
Web host Interjuncture (interjuncture.com) says it has already tested the anti-spam capabilities withgreat success.
“Ensim WEBppliance Pro 3.7′s new anti-spam support is a great new feature. As a Webhosting provider we receive the most customer complaints regarding spam,” saidGeorge Roberts, president and CEO of Interjuncture. “While we’ve had a third-partysolution in place for some time with WEBppliance Pro 3.5, it did not offer theflexibility and control that the new version of WEBppliance does. My users will nowbe able to configure how the system manages spam for their account, giving themflexibility to specify their ‘threshold for pain’ and what to do with spam when itis found.”
The new capabilities tie in with Ensim’s strategy of equipping hosts withthe capabilities they need to differentiate themselves and make their offerings moreattractive to potential customers.
“We think this is going to give hosters using Ensim software a major differentiationin the market,” said Dauber. He noted that being able to stand out is critical intoday’s increasingly competitive and commoditized hosting market.
In addition to the anti-spam capabilities, Ensim has enhanced the control panel withtechnology that allows software to run on unmodified versions of Linux andapplications such as Apache, Sendmail and PHP. Typically, users have to rely on thesoftware vendor for updates such as security patches when running proprietaryversions of operating systems and applications. With the changes, users now have toflexibility to perform their own updates and take advantages of other open sourcecommunity benefits, the company said.
“We are the first control panel that is not incorporating any proprietary versionsof these standard applications,” said Dauber. “The advantage to the hoster is thatthey don’t need to go to Ensim for the update, they can get it from the open sourcecommunity.”
As a result of these changes, Ensim is dropping the WEBppliance name because “we nolonger consider the software an appliance,” said Dauber. The name change was made,Dauber explained, to underline the new openness and advantages to hosters.
Meanwhile, Ensim also announced the availability of anti-spam functionality forEnsim Basic, the latest version of the WEBppliance Basic control panel foroperators of individual dedicated Web servers.
