Dell, Symantec Product to Control E-Mail for SMBs

Dell and Symantec launched a joint product Wednesday to control e-mail security and data archiving for small and midsize businesses.

Secure Exchange is a combination of Dell hardware and Symantec software that adds enterprise IT capability to basic Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory mailboxes.

Facing a swelling tide of e-mail volume and viruses, small companies can use the product to deploy antivirus and antispam shields, and archive and retrieve their e-mail, said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell’s Product Group.

Dell’s mail servers classify 94 percent of the 17 million e-mail messages received every day as spam, and the company’s firewalls deflect about 400 million potential intrusions every day, he said. Small businesses don’t have the resources to handle that workload.

So Dell is selling Secure Exchange to companies with 500 to 2,000 e-mail users. The package also includes Dell training services and Platinum Plus service contract.

“Customers have told us that messaging and e-mail are the lifeblood of their organizations,” said Francis deSouza, vice president of enterprise messaging management at Symantec. “So you don’t just drop Exchange in there and have it run your e-mail naked, but you need an ecosystem around it, providing security, availability, compliance and mailbox management.”

As their businesses grow, customers can adjust the package to emphasize frequent backup or fast performance, a typical engineering trade-off in mail systems, he said.

Dell decided to partner with Symantec after the success of past technology bundles such as its Oracle Database configurations and High-Performance Computing Cluster equipment stacks, said Judy Chavis, Dell’s director of business development and global alliances. The company launched its Platinum Plus services package in June as part of an effort to supplement slumping profits from PC sales.

Dell is selling Secure Exchange for US$54,678 for the 500-seat version of a package including the Dell PowerEdge 1950s server, PowerVault 110T and M1000 storage, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, and Symantec Backup Exec. Larger customers can scale up with Dell/EMC Clariion storage products, Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series, Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange and Enterprise Vault. For more information, visit Dell’s site.

-Ben Ames, IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.