PostPath Announces Remote Office Edition of Its Drop-in Linux-Based Email and Collaboration Server

WebKnowHow
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; 03:44 AM

PostPath, creator of the Linux-based PostPath Email and Collaboration Server, announced a solution for one of the most vexing problems faced by email administrators – supporting email and collaboration in geographically remote offices.

According to Postpath, The PostPath Server is the only drop-in and plug-compatible alternative to Microsoft Exchange, providing native and full-featured support for Outlook without the need for plug-ins or other desktop changes, and without disrupting existing infrastructure.

“The world needs a much better way to support email and collaboration for geographically remote offices,” said Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst at IT Harvest. “The need to support multiple Exchange servers is a major pain point for many large and medium size businesses that have lots of remote offices.”

Due to the limitations of Microsoft Exchange when meeting the needs of geographically remote offices, most organizations end up being forced to choose one of two deployment options: either a distributed approach that requires a full Microsoft Exchange server environment and the IT resources to manage it at every remote office or a centralized approach with Outlook clients connecting to the headquarters network operations center (NOC) over a high-bandwidth network connection.

“The distributed approach is expensive both in terms of hardware and staffing, while the centralized approach drives similarly high costs at the network connection level and provides only a high-latency service. Neither option represents a good solution for IT and their remote users,” said PostPath CEO, Duncan Greatwood.

To solve this problem, PostPath created the PostPath Server Remote Office Edition. The Remote Office Edition is typically configured centrally and then shipped to and installed at the remote office to handle that office’s email and collaboration requirements. This approach minimizes bandwidth needs while delivering a high-performance service on low-cost hardware or within a virtualized environment.

At the same time, the Remote Office Edition server supports continuous replication to the main network operations center (NOC) so that backup and other administrative tasks can be carried out centrally on the NOC’s replicated copy of the remote server. Given the PostPath Server’s low maintenance design, users enjoy the speed of remote office on-site deployment without requiring the expense of local IT support while IT minimizes bandwidth costs and gains the convenience of centralized administration.

Additionally, the replicated server at the NOC implements high availability, acting normally as a standby server but ready to provide service in the event of a hardware or other failure at the remote office. Failover, if required, is automatic, and takes less than a minute. Once failover occurs, Outlook automatically reconnects to the NOC server without needing to be restarted.

Replication and high availability are implemented using standard, supported Linux components: specifically, DRBD and Linux-HA-heartbeat. No special tools or hardware are required, making high-availability for the geographically remote office practical and cost-effective for the first time.

The PostPath Server Remote Office Edition’s on-site server deployment minimizes bandwidth requirements by eliminating WAN usage when local users access their data. This eliminates both duplicate WAN downloads and WAN traversal of local emails. Traffic management is also supported and removes the risk of choking low bandwidth connections during peak times.

For any IT professional that has suffered the headaches of trying to deploy and manage Exchange servers for their remote offices, PostPath Remote Office Edition provides relief by including native support for Outlook, Blackberry, Active Directory, and other Exchange Servers, with the ability to deliver low latency, minimized hardware cost, offsite replication and high availability (HA), and low maintenance over low-bandwidth pipes.