Mirapoint Appliance Targeted At SMBs

Designed to be easier to deploy than Mirapoint's higher-end appliances, the RazorGate 100 eschews mail queues that administrators must monitor and instead automatically scans and filters e-mail messages. It includes virus scanning and Mirapoint's Full Spectrum technology, which integrates spam analysis, identification, filtering and management features.

The RazorGate appliances start at $4,995 for the base hardware, with a typical configuration for 300 users priced at $12,500, said Jeff Brainard, senior product marketing manager at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Mirapoint.

The RazorGate 300 model adds queue management tools and an e-mail quarantine queue, integrated LDAP-based routing, a wiretap for behind-the-scenes monitoring of users' e-mail, battery backed-up RAID controllers and auto-recovery. The RazorGate 300 supports up to 5,000 users per box and costs $27,500 for a 300-user configuration, Brainard said.

The RazorGate 100 is available now, and the RazorGate 300 is expected to be available in the first quarter, he said.

"Our partners were demanding a product that wasn't [as] high end as Mirapoint Messenger and Director, but rather a watered-down product that was GUI-based," Brainard said. "They also wanted rapid deployment within minutes, and this gives them that by letting them or their customers take the box and plug it into the Ethernet cable and turn it on with minimal setup."

Paragon Systems, Herndon, Va., is waiting to receive some of the RazorGate units for testing, said President Gary Newgaard. Paragon is a government systems integrator and has worked on several deals with Mirapoint.

"We were at a show last week, and the level of interest in the [RazorGate] appliances was huge," Newgaard said. "It wasn't a big show, about 300 people, but at least 20 C-level [CEO/CIO] folks were very interested. And these weren't just government agencies, but universities."