Larkware.com -----original article

SurgeMail 3.0, starting at $175/10 users
NetWin
Auckland, New Zealand
SurgeMail is a cross-platform (Windows/Linux/Mac OSX/Solaris) e-mail
server with quite reasonable pricing - in addition to per-user pricing
that tops out at $870 for unlimited users, it's free for up to 5 users
for non-commercial use without SSL or direct support. Despite the low
cost, it doesn't stint on features at all. After a quick and painless
installation on my test Windows 2003 server, I was presented with an
easy Web interface and an instantly-functional Web mail client, and had
no trouble getting the thing sending and receiving messages very
quickly. SurgeMail offers good support for a variety of relevant
standards as well as a reasonable batch of extra features, such as
calendar and photo-sharing support in the WebMail client.

The server supports all the protocols you'd expect - POP3. SMTP and
ESMTP, IMAP, and the various secure variants. You can set up your own
user accounts within SurgeMail, but it also supports authentication
modules that let you store the user accounts elsewhere - Windows or Unix
user accounts, LDAP accounts, or even a MySQL database or proprietary
system. You can configure accounts so that they have access to only some
services, so, for example, you can set up WebMail-only accounts, and you
can set storage quotas for accounts as well.

The Spam and virus scanning options here are reasonably flexible as
well. You get a batch of ways to ban particular senders (by IP, number
of bad addresses on a message, and so on), support for Aspam (a
"scoring" system for determining whether messages are spam, similar to
the way Exchange's Junk Mail Filter works), and support for RBLs and
SPF. You can also configure things to run every message through a virus
scanner if you want. Administration of everything is easy through the
Web interface, which provides both numerical status on everything and
pretty graphs for those who'd rather take in information at a glance.

Other goodies you'll find built in to the base package include support
for multiple virtual domains, server mirroring and fallover,
notification and message delivery via SMS, and the ability to configure
things with split front-end/back-end mail servers for large
organizations. I didn't test performance and scalability myself, but
NetWin claims you can support tens of thousands of users on a single
multiprocessor box, and they have some satisfied reference customers to
prove it. If you're an all-Microsoft shop, of course, you'd give up some
of the deep integration between Outlook and Exchange if you moved to
SurgeMail. But if you're a small development shop abusing your MSDN
license to run an illegal Exchange server for youe main e-mail,
SurgeMail offers an attractive way to get a full-featured and legal
server for a very reasonable price.

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.

Internetnews.com -----original article

NetWin Positions For Blogging Surge
By Susan Kuchinskas

Internet and Intranet service providers will be able to let users blog
from within Web mail via a new server product released on Monday.

SurgeBlog 1.0 is an enterprise-class message server product from NetWin,
targeted at ISPs and enterprise intranets. The blog server can be
integrated with a user's e-mail account; integration with the e-mail
server software allows users to post to their blogs within NetWin's
WebEmail interface or from a separate account management interface.
Posts can also be made via phone.

Ralph Pugmire, director of product management for NetWin, said the
product is designed for consumers and non-technical business workers.
SurgeBlog is included in the latest version of the company's e-mail
server software, SurgeMail 3.5; it's also available as standalone
software.

Tools are available to monitor comments, so that a blog's creator can
remove offensive or inappropriate content. SurgeMail blogs include a
built-in RSS (define
<http://inews.webopedia.com/SHARED/search_action.asp?Term=RSS&Template_N
ame=inews.webopedia.com> ) feed, so that they can be syndicated and made
available for subscription. The next release, expected in early October,
will include that ability to create public or private blogs, protect
them with a password; more templates that are aimed at creating blogs
that are more like Web sites and improved content management.

NetWin provides a Web post interface, a management interface and a
comments interface to enable the blog's creator to monitor content and
remove anything that might be offensive or inappropriate. Corporate
administrators can define permission and security settings and designate
team members who can post or configure the blog.

Archiving is automatic and handled by the blog server, as are visit
counting and comment structure.

Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr said he didn't see the need for
another entry in blog-serving. "There are a lot of really great cheap or
free blogging applications," he said. (Jupiter Research and
internetnews.com are owned by the same corporation.

Pugmire said the advantage of SurgeBlog is that it's a complete package,
while other blogging software requires integration with a Web server and
database. "It contains all the different components, you install it and
you immediately have a blog server," he said. He added that the software
also uses fewer resources than products that require multiple parts.

Auckland, N.Z. NetWin began life as a maker of server software;
SurgeBlog was released as a beta on July 1.