According to Cloudmark's Tuesday announcement at Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas, Cloudmark's new cloud computing solution was developed in response to direct feedback from tier 1 and web hosting customers, with specific architecture improvements to meet their unique needs.
Cloudmark chief technology officer Jamie de Guerre said that by focusing on web hosts' specific needs, CloudFilter provides capabilities that other message filters do not meet.
De Guerre said that other similar services were launched in the late 90's and early 2000's, and while their technology and capabilities have changed, their service model has not. "They were very much designed around the idea that they would provide a direct service to a customer," de Guerre said. "They weren't designed to enable web hosting companies to offer new premium services under their own brand or under a co-branded service where the experience of the end-customer stays as the hosted company's experience, not as the vendor's experience. CloudFilter, on the other hand, is just that. We've designed it specifically for hosting to offer value-added services for their customers, and do it in a way that their experience is still their experience."
From the provider of carrier-grade filtering for major tier 1 global service providers worldwide, CloudFilter delivers proven accuracy, as well as the unique advantage of eliminating the hardware and operational costs associated with managing an on-premises email security solution. CloudFilter is delivered using two data centers in the US located in San Jose and the New York area. The company plans to expand to Europe within the year.
CloudFilter also offers service providers infinite scalability to meet extremely high operational demands for capacity, performance and service quality, according to Parallels international SaaS and service provider division vice president Soeren von Varchmin.
"The CloudFilter solution combines the cost and management benefits of cloud computing-based services with performance and accuracy, which is key for hosting companies," von Varchmin said. "We're very excited to see new cloud computing initiatives launching that are specifically designed for web hosting companies, like the CloudFilter solution."
As well, CloudFilter offers web hosts a way around the "current pain points" in managing their email security services, according to the company, letting them deliver a value-added service to their customers without the current infrastructure and administrative burden of managing security themselves. It also helps web hosts foster and strengthen customer relationships by providing a branded, seamless experience for both web hosting and email services.
While clearly valuable for the small and medium-sized business market, De Guerre also added that added that many larger hosts will be interested in the service as well. "Pretty much every hosting will have interest in this because they don't want to have to be experts in the email part. They're already experts in a field themselves and email is not their core focus," he said.
