SendMail beefs up antispam features

SendMail, whose technology shuttles nearly 60 percent of email on the internet, has agreed to make Cloudmark's antispam filtering tools a centerpiece of its commercial mail management software.

SendMail produces open-source software that routes corporate email to and from the internet; 90 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies use the software on their networks. It also sells a commercial version that includes email management and filtering services to protect enterprises against viruses and spam. By partnering with Cloudmark, SendMail replaces its former antispam provider Elron Software, and it stakes its sales on the effectiveness of Cloudmark to fend off unwanted email.

SendMail CEO and President Dave Anderson said: "Antispam is a very critical piece of mail management and mail filtering. Cloudmark is now the core of what we sell [in antispam]. And we sell one consolidated package [for email management] so that all of the email quarantined can be processed from one centralised location."

Anderson said that the company could see revenue increase 50 per cent in the next year as a result of the Cloudmark deal.

For Cloudmark, the deal gives the company new stature in an industry rife with competition. Sendmail chose Cloudmark after testing 42 antispam software products over several months, Anderson said. Cloudmark's product Authority won for its performance and effectiveness at mitigating false-positives, or mislabeling legitimate email as spam, Anderson said.

Matt Cain, research analyst at Meta Group, said: "This deal is important because there's so much Sendmail out there, that anything associated with it is bound to get some scrutiny from commercial Sendmail shops. From Cloudmark's perspective, it raises their visibility, and gives them new distribution."

The agreement also plays into a broader trend among email software companies of all stripes to consolidate their businesses. Corporations typically contract with several separate technology companies to protect their email networks from viruses and spam using security software and content-specific filtering. But email software providers are setting their sights on building full-service shops.

This summer, email appliance maker IronPort Systems licensed Brightmail's antispam technology for its newest product, the IronPort C60. In September, antivirus software company Sophos acquired ActiveState, a provider of corporate spam-fighting technology. Last week, computer-security maker Zone Labs agreed to bundle antispam software from Cloudmark with its products.

"This is a sign of the rampant partnering in email hygiene market," Cain said.

Cloudmark distributes SpamNet, a spam-fighting tool that identifies junk email and quickly updates email filters by harnessing the intelligence of the web community. The consumer product is based on Razor, an open-source spam-filtering system that sifts out junk mail on the advice of nearly 500,000 users. The company also sells Authority, email filtering software for corporations. As part of the deal, SendMail will resell Authority as part of a set of filters it offers enterprise customers, which include antivirus software.

Cloudmark's customers include Documentum, Fidelity, Restoration Hardware and Nolte.

Stefanie Olsen writes for CNET News.com