[London, ENGLAND] ThinkMail, a secure outsourced e-mail solution
from Scottish ISP iomart Group plc, made its European debut Monday
following successful pre-launch trials.
With ThinkMail, iomart hopes to exploit what is sees is a largely
untapped European demand for securely managed mission-critical
e-mail. It says it will compete with other services on cost,
security and reliability, while also offering server level
anti-virus protection, e-billing, and a mobile phone text message
capability.
Angus MacSween, chief executive of iomart, admitted his company was
ahead of the market in creating solutions to problems about which
the commercial sector was not even aware existed. But the strategy
of being “ahead of the game” meant that iomart had a vital lead
in designing custom-made answers for what he called “today’s
rapidly changing business landscape.”
Daniel Smith, iomart director of application service provider
services, emphasized the cost savings, saying that ThinkMail
is between 60 and 90 percent of the cost of an e-mail system managed
in-house.
ThinkMail’s e-billing capability allows users to bill their
customers online. The system also offers upselling and referral
opportunities, all of which help to make it an attractive
proposition for corporate users.
Other features of ThinkMail include easy remote control and
a robust infrastructure, enabling company-wide e-mail access
with plenty of room for expansion.
To create the new system, iomart has partnered with Sun, Cisco,
Hitachi and Sendmail, and claims to have created one of the best
e-mail hosting platforms for commercial, large-scale applications in
the U.K. It is designed for an uptime of 99.99 percent, providing
secure messaging at a fixed monthly cost.
The iomart Group is proving to be one of Britain’s most innovative
ISPs, with interests across a whole range of related technologies.
It offers not only messaging but also DSL, ISDN, bandwidth on demand,
Voice over IP, traditional telephony, Internet access, Virtual Internet
Service Provider services, Web hosting, co-location, web site building,
and domain name registration.
