Jamie de Guerre interviewed by WHIR tv at WebHosting Day 2008
An email conversation with Jamie de Guerre, chief technology officer of email security company Cloudmark, in which he discusses the content of his session “Stop Spending, Start Saving: Integrating an Email Security Solution That Works for You,” which will take place 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 4th at the Parallels Summit.
In advance of this year’s Parallels Summit in Las Vegas, we’re contacting some of the speakers presenting at the event and asking them about the content of their sessions in an effort to give readers a sense of what to expect from the event, and perhaps help them choose which sessions to attend.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Sometimes the sales-pitch aspect of a conference presentation can feel out-of-place or intrusive, particularly when that pitch is disguised behind a thin veneer of general interest.
And sometimes a sales pitch is just what the audience is looking for. After all, finding new solutions and potential revenue sources is a big part of the reason hosting providers attend conferences.
With his Wednesday session at the Parallels Summit next week, Jamie de Guerre, chief technology officer of email filtering company Cloudmark is offering exactly that – a straightforward look at the company’s Cloudmark Authority product, an email spam filtering solution designed in part for use by hosting providers.
The session will be unabashedly part sales pitch, but it will also include a discussion of how preventing spam from accessing certain parts of a web hosting architecture can cut down on costs by eliminating the need for certain resources.
In an email conversation with the WHIR, de Guerre discusses some of the subjects certain to arise in the session, scheduled for Wednesday, February 4 at 2:30 p.m.
WHIR: By the sounds of it, your session is really focused around describing the Cloudmark software to web hosting providers. Can you give us a quick idea of Cloudmark’s approach to the hosting community how it fits into your business?
Jamie de Guerre: With years of proven experience protecting the world’s largest ISPs from messaging abuse, Cloudmark brings the industry’s highest level for filtering accuracy and performance to hosting providers, as well as expert messaging abuse consultants. Cloudmark recognizes that web hosting providers, who often offer email as a value added service to their customers, have similar needs and pain points as service providers. As hosted email providers, they face the same customer needs comparable to service providers, demanding a high level of service, free of spam and protection against phishing and virus attacks – not meeting this demand results in customer churn. Additionally, web hosting providers face the same email management issues that arise from managing spam attacks, including expended resources and rising capital costs.
Cloudmark has proven its value to web hosting providers with it’s original foray into the web hoster email security market with Cloudmark Authority for SpamAssassin, a plug-in that interoperates and enhances the performance of SpamAssassin. Cloudmark believes that there are further opportunities to provide web hosting providers with the industry leading protection against messaging security attacks, and we will be announcing a new cloud-based service at my session on Wednesday.
Part of the pitch seems to be the extent of the problem spam causes for hosting providers. Can you expand on that a bit for us?
JDG: Spam, at the end of the day, makes email management unpredictable. A spam outbreak has the potential to overload a company’s mail servers or saturate the network, often causing email service disruption to its customers, leading to customer complaints. To prevent this from happening, web hosting providers expend countless resources to manage their email security and invest in capital to provide extra capacity to handle spikes in email traffic.
The session summary promises “real world data on cost savings.” Can you give me a few examples of where specifically that applies?
JDG: Cloudmark’s messaging security solutions filter over 98 percent of spam, ensuring that mail stores are clean, providing significant cost savings from storage, bandwidth, and processing resources. For example, Cloudmark Authority for SpamAssassin delivers at least a 50 percent reduction in server resource consumption than competitive solutions.
Along with cost savings, are there money-making opportunities for hosts with Cloudmark?
JDG: Yes, definitely! Hosting providers will be able to provide their customers with an effective premium email service free from spam, phishing and viruses. This service can help drive adoption with their customers, create a new revenue stream for the web hoster and strengthen their relationship with customers.
Obviously there’s an association with Parallels here, but does Cloudmark’s software have any specific compatibility with elements of the Parallels platform?
JDG: Cloudmark is planning to deliver a control panel application that will allow web hosters to offer CloudFilter services through the familiar Plesk interface, providing seamless configuration and management of the service.
My understanding is that Cloudmark is, like a few other companies, planning an announcement to coincide with the Parallels summit. I know you probably can’t reveal anything in advance, but can you perhaps offer any advice on the sort of person who might want to keep an eye out for that?
JDG: Web hosters should pay attention for a next generation of email security solution that is specifically architected to meet the needs of web host providers, and lower their current operational and capital costs. Any web hoster that provides email services and is interested in improving the level of service to enable new revenue streams should attend the session and watch out for our announcement!
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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