Outblaze Offers Complete Messaging Package

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Outblaze Offers Complete Messaging Package
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Rawlson O’Neil King, theWHIR.com
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July 19, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY
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REVIEW) — Many enterprises and service providers use outsourced email
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to reduce overall messaging costs and improve reliability. According to
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Gartner Group (gartner.com), 80 percent of enterprises with fewer than 300 users could save money by outsourcing email.
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Businesses recognize many benefits from
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outsourcing their email systems. Outsourcing email allows businesses to
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reduce capital costs and attain predictable cost structures while
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improving performance, reliability and security. Most importantly,
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outsourced email allows enterprises to realize a scalable environment
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and to add new capabilities without upgrading software or hardware.
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According to the US Department of Commerce (doc.gov), sending messages is the most popular use for the Internet (79.9 percent of Internet users use email). According to IDC (idc.com),
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the number of worldwide email mailboxes is expected to increase at a
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compound annual growth rate of 139 percent, from 505 million in 2000 to
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1.2 billion in 2005.
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One company positioning itself to capture a portion of this market is Outblaze Limited (outblaze.com), a Hong Kong-based firm that has developed a fully integrated messaging and collaboration platform.
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The main engine of the platform is email
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services, with support for authenticated SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, Web, WAP
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and SMS access. The service is well suited to service providers because
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its supports full integration with Internet payment gateways for
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premium email services.
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“In the service provider space we
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recognize there is a greater need for specialization,” states Stefano
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Bensi, managing director of Outblaze’s US operations. “Although email
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can be considered a commodity, it is becoming a complex service to
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manage. Our team focuses on managing that complexity on the behalf of
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both the enterprise and service provider.”
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“By using our system, service providers
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do not have to maintain email systems or develop and deploy any
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collaboration applications themselves. Our tools ensure scalability,
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removes development costs and creates economies of scale.”
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The company prides itself on having
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pioneered the provision of email portal solutions suitable for
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organizations that want to offer their own private label Web
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technologies and services without the hassle and cost of developing or
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purchasing expensive platforms. The plug-in services were built from
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the ground up to be fully customizable and multilingual, allowing
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customers to access not only email, but also a wide range of other
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integrated business services.
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Outblaze’s approach enables Web hosting
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companies and other service providers to offer a whole suite of
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customized, private-labeled online business productivity tools. Those
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other tools include integrated products such as: an address book, a
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calendar, a text chat interface, an online file system, homepage
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building with integrated Web hosting, a Web-based instant messenger,
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mailing lists, message board, basic word processor with spell check,
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photo album, and polling system. The email system is itself reinforced
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by a combined anti-spam and antivirus service called “sentry.”
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The goal of the entire integrated system
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is ultimately to eliminate the endless lists of user names and
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passwords that many consumers need to access their multiple services.
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One single login process provides access
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to the whole suite of services. All features are integrated to
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complement each other and reinforce the service in general. For
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example, the calendar service works in conjunction with the email
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service to send out notifications and reminders about appointments.
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With the Outblaze application programming
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interface, service providers can also integrate the rest of their
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existing services seamlessly to provide a single, clean user experience
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under their own brand, or under their customer’s look and feel if
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desired. The service provider need not worry about physical or logical
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integration of the API with their own resources, since the Outblaze
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system is completely operated out of the firm’s global network of data
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centers, located in the US, India, China, and the United Kingdom.
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With the firm managing its own equipment
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from these facilities, service providers do not have to concern
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themselves directly with managing customers and dealing with
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infrastructure growth, in terms of applications or storage.
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