SYNAQ

We here at SYNAQ are on the cusp of a new release for Pinpoint 2, release 0.16, and this single release adds new features that we feel, if not communicated properly, can cause some confusion with our users and domain administrators using the interface. This blog post is an attempt to help educate our users on these new features before we publish them to the live system.

The new features that the next release will provide, make it possible for mail recipients in an organisation to finally see what mail, if any, that was intended for them has been blocked and in addition communicate the need for these messages to be released to a domain administrator in a more streamlined and consistent process. These same mail recipients can alternatively release these messages themselves, alleviating work load on the administrators.

How does all this work? Read on to find out

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Johannesburg-based open source software as a service company SYNAQ’s excellent performance in the interim SA FastGrowth 100 index is a clear indication that open source and software as a service (SaaS) is rapidly moving to mainstream within the South African corporate environment.

So says SYNAQ managing director Yossi Hasson, who points out that in the five years tracked by the index, SYNAQ experienced top line revenue growth of 184%, making it the sixth fastest growing company of those tracked in South Africa by AllWorld Network.

The report described the performance of the list’s ranked companies in 2009 in particular as “stunning” in the way it defied “the sluggishness of the global economy”.

“That SYNAQ was included in this grouping is an unambiguous affirmation of the fact that corporate South Africa is wholeheartedly embracing cloud-based services and open source software.

“This trend is being driven by companies seeking alternatives to the exorbitant infrastructure costs, vendor lock-in and software complexity they have been subjected to for so long,” Hasson adds.

The AllWorld “South Africa 34/100 Fast Facts” list – an interim list intended to give early economic indicators of South Africa’s entrepreneurial growth potential – was published earlier this month (to view the list go to: http://www.allworldlive.com/south-africa-100/winners/34-100).

The list, which is endorsed by Harvard University Professor Michael E Porter, a leading authority on competitive strategy, is made up of companies that reach AllWorld’s international standard for competitive fast growth companies. The rankings are based on sales growth between 2006 and 2009.

Moments ago we released the latest version of Pinpoint 2 (0.15) to our customers, and those who have used the system may now notice that on the Message Listing module itself as well as within certain report parameters, the option can be chosen to view details of Outbound mail. This release has actually been in the works a lot longer than the two weeks since 0.14 came out, but due to SYNAQ wanting to ensure that our newly-minted Outbound service was working optimally we did not release the functionality with 0.14 and instead held the Outbound specific UI features back till we were satisfied with the end result. What does this mean for our customers? Well, you can now have Pinpoint SecureMail scan all your outgoing mail as well. In addition, because we would end up logging all the outgoing mail from your domain, you get all the same reporting features available to your incoming mail, allowing you to accurately identify how your organisation is sending mail. If you are interested in the Outbound service for your organisation’s mail please feel free to contact sales@synaq.com. A short list of the benefits this Outbound service gives you:

• Protection from spam mail created by malware that may exist in your organisation due to the Outbound spam filters.
• Control over content types and size allowed to leave your organisation via email.
• Detailed reporting abilities on all mail coming out of your organisations domains.
• Basic outbound mail queue viewing to determine if mail you sent is still waiting to be delivered.

We do also have other plans that will leverage across our Outbound service, so watch this space. Oh yes … we have plans (cue evil laughter)

BBG Service Provider (SP), a Converged Communication and Cloud Computing Services Company, has joined forces with SYNAQ to deliver SYNAQ’s Cloud Messaging Services. SYNAQ is a leader in the South African Open Source/ SaaS (software as a service) community.

Yossi Hasson (SYNAQ) Brian Timperley, Grant Thom and Louis Jardim (BBG SP) outside BBG SP offices in Bryanston.

This follows the recent launch of SYNAQ’s channel partner programme for ISPs, ISVs and system integrators.  The programme enables SYNAQ’s Partners to provide cost-effective, value-added, cloud-based solutions to their customers.

According to BBG SP Sales Director, Grant Thom, the company provides underlying infrastructure and services for all communication requirements beyond the LAN. This is provisioned in a completely network agnostic format.

“We provide capacity on best-of-breed national and international infrastructures, to create uniquely bundled services that are applicable to a client’s needs. Access to business critical applications in the cloud is reinforcing the business drivers for high-speed, redundant connectivity.

“After careful evaluation of cloud messaging services, we found SYNAQ to be the market leaders. Not only are they highly respected, but continuously add value far beyond the traditional mail messaging boundaries. In alignment with the BBG SP value proposition, the partnership with SYNAQ therefore provides our clients with a quality cloud messaging solution,” he said.

SYNAQ CEO Yossi Hasson said the company has developed a strong and redundant messaging infrastructure over the past five years which partners like BBG SP could leverage to provide their customers with essential messaging services. These are based around SYNAQ’s flagship products, developed on Open Source platforms: Pinpoint SecureMail, a messaging hygiene offering designed to eliminate spam and malicious viruses from customers’ networks; Pinpoint Continuity which provides full redundancy for mail infrastructure; Pinpoint Archive, providing tamper-proof unlimited storage email retention and SYNAQ Cloud Messaging Suite, a full messaging and collaboration solution powered by Zimbra.

“We are delighted that a company of BBG SP’s reputation and experience has chosen to partner with SYNAQ and include our solutions as part of their value proposition to their customers,” Hasson concluded.

SYNAQ Spam Index Q1 2010

(SYNAQ Spam Index – Q1 2010)

There are a lot of great articles on the web talking about spam’s impact on the environment, and one of the things that comes across immediately when you read them, is the negative impact when spam protection is not implemented for a user. Based on research findings it has been determined that the greatest environmental cost from spam (energy consumed, Green House Gas emissions and so on) is generated by users reading through junk mail, deleting junk mail, and looking for false positives (clean or valid email).

Here are some key findings (2008 McAffee/ICE Report Data):

• An estimated worldwide total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent in 2008

• Globally, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh) That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same Green House Gas (GHG) emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 8.8 billion liters of petrol
• Spam filtering saves 135 TWh of electricity per year. That’s like taking 13 million cars off the road
• If every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75 percent or 25 TWh per year. That’s equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road
• The average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2, and when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, that’s equivalent to driving around the Earth 1.6 million times

• A year’s email at a typical medium-size business uses 50,000 KWh; more than one fifth of that annual use can be associated with spam
• Filtering spam is beneficial, but fighting spam at the source is even better. When McColo, a major source of online spam, was taken offline in late 2008, the energy saved in the ensuing lull — before spammers rebuilt their sending capacity — equated to taking 2.2 million cars off the road
• Much of the energy consumption associated with spam (80 percent) comes from end-users deleting spam and searching for legitimate email (false positives)
• Spam filtering accounts for just 16 percent of spam related energy use

Reviewing our SPAM index for Q1 2010, and taking into account that SYNAQ’s Pinpoint SecureMail anti-spam service has a negligible false positive rate of 0,003%, we can see that our contribution to the reduction of GHG emissions while globally small is still significant.

Based on data taken from the McAffee/ICE Report, our service is removing, on average, 0,24g (0,3g * 80%) of GHG emissions from the atmosphere for each spam blocked. This translates into:

• JAN-2010: 72.3 million spam’s blocked  = 17 tons of CO2 saved
• FEB-2010: 66.6 million spam’s blocked  = 16 tons of CO2 saved
• MAR-2010: 69,3 million spam’s blocked = 16.6 tons of CO2 saved

Grand Total for Q1 2010: 49,6 tons of CO2 emissions saved.

Now that’s what I call a software service. Cleaning your inbox and saving the planet at the same time.

The recent Seacom undersea cable outage is a clear indication that hosting applications internationally can be very dangerous for South African businesses.

This according to Yossi Hasson, CEO of the Johannesburg-based open source software as a service company, SYNAQ, who says that while hosting “in-the-cloud” is operationally cost-effective, it is important that these applications are hosted “at-the-edge” – within South Africa – to reduce downtime risk. “The costs of local hosting have come down dramatically in recent months, reducing the need to host internationally any more,” he says. Hasson points out that the Seacom outage did more than affect e-mail transmission and Internet browsing.

Most high-end e-mail security solutions, utilised by corporate South Africa, are hosted overseas. With the disruption to the cable link, some businesses were left unprotected or unable to access their e-mail.

Hasson believes the outage should be regarded as a warning to local businesses that intend to or already use the cloud for their business computing needs to look closer to home, particularly for the hosting of their enterprise applications.

“South African businesses have long had to put up with slow download and response times from the global Internet because of our international bandwidth constraints. The completion of the Seacom cable was heralded as the start of a new era in international Internet connectivity,” he says.

“Unfortunately, just as the Icelandic volcano showed with regard to air transport, the fault on the Mediterranean section of the Seacom undersea cable demonstrated that nothing in the world of communications can be taken for granted.”

Hasson emphasises that this does not mean that local businesses cannot enjoy all the benefits of cloud computing, including lower operating and capital costs as well as convenience.

“At SYNAQ, we have long held the view that the performance problems associated with international bandwidth availability could best be reduced by ensuring that required applications and services are hosted locally. This is why we recommend to all of our customers to seek cloud providers that have local ‘edge’ capability – cloud services, but hosted locally.

“We have invested a significant amount to develop infrastructure locally that is capable of hosting all our SaaS applications, effectively eliminating the performance problems associated with international bandwidth availability,” Hasson concludes.

looks forward to many more

01 December 2009

SYNAQ, the Johannesburg-based Linux and open source managed services and software services company, has made a significant impact on the local IT scene since its establishment five years ago, by two (very) young entrepreneurs, Yossi Hasson and David Jacobson.

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Small and medium enterprises can now tap the benefits of advanced network easily , affordably and reliably

13 October 2009

Small and medium enterprises can now tap the benefits of advanced network communications and collaboration technologies easily, affordably, reliably and securely following the launch of SYNAQ Business Suite (SBS).

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Pinpoint SecureMail 2.0 acts as first line of defence

18 August 2009

SYNAQ, the managed Linux services and open source solutions company, has launched a locally-hosted, enhanced version of its home-grown Pinpoint SecureMail SaaS (software as a service) solution.

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Tremendous advantages for businesses in terms of lower costs

12 August 2009

Cloud computing holds tremendous advantages for businesses in terms of lower operating and capital costs as well as convenience; but, there are several important considerations to bear in mind before committing to the cloud.

That’s the view of Yossi Hasson, CEO of managed Linux services and open source solutions company SYNAQ, who says one of the main areas of concern is that of control.

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