Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Teneros Application Continuity Appliances for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007

Year Founded: 2003

Number of Channel Partners: 1,500+ in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: Few companies can afford an e-mail outage these days, and that's exactly what Teneros aims to prevent.

The Lowdown: Teneros' appliance family doesn't just offer an important function. It also offers peace of mind. The Teneros Application Continuity Appliances for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 provide disaster recovery and high availability for one of customers' most valuable business assets: e-mail.

Teneros E-Series Application Continuity Appliance

"The value proposition of 24x7 availability of e-mail is pretty obvious. E-mail is entrenched in what we do, and when the e-mail process stops, people stop being productive," said Andrea Skov, chief marketing officer for Teneros.

The Teneros appliance is offered as a Software-as-a-Service solution and as a hardware appliance. Partners can install a server, flip a switch and walk away from the solution. Or, as Skov suggests, take advantage of the SaaS solution. The hardware offering may bring some service contracts, but with the economy slowing down, the SaaS solution brings with it an attractive monthly revenue stream.

The Teneros offering maintains an ongoing backup of the Microsoft Exchange message store, filtering out any file corruption along the way. If the Exchange server falters, Teneros steps in and serves e-mail messages to end users without interruption. The entire solution is managed from a Web-based user interface that pushes e-mails about the status of the Exchange server to the administrator. Any problems can be addressed by the administrator through the UI.

The Continuity Appliances for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 are distributed in North America by Bell Micro, which has been offering products from Teneros since the fall of 2008.