IT security and data protection company Sophos announced the availability of its Virtual Email Security Appliance – described by the UK firm as the first virtual security appliance to bring strong security, data protection, and administration ease to the latest VMware virtual environments.
The firm says this new virtual appliance delivers on the growing popularity of businesses seeking cost savings, responsiveness, scalability, and continuity through virtualisation.
A member of the Sophos Email Security and Data Protection product line, the new virtual email appliance brings the same integrated protection and management of Sophos’ hardware appliances to VMWare virtualised environments.
Sophos says that customers and analysts such as Gartner agree that virtualisation is much more than a tactical cost-cutting trend. Gartner aptly notes that virtualisation is creating a strategic shift in overall IT modernisation with virtual machines improving responsiveness and delivery within an enterprise 10, 20, or even 30 times faster than traditional hardware and software server solutions.
According to VMWare, server virtualisation allows organisations to be more efficient reducing hardware and operating costs by as much as half and energy costs by 80 per cent all while reducing the time it takes to provision new servers by up to 70pc.
Chris Kraft, Vice President of Product Management, Sophos says: “Businesses are saving considerable time and effort virtualising parts of their data centres but have been traditionally faced with limited options for comprehensive email security. We believe the Sophos Virtual Email Appliance provides organisations with the most complete option for email security, providing reliable protection against all forms of spam and malware while also addressing the latest demands in safeguarding data through our patent-pending SPX encryption and DLP capabilities. All of these capabilities are delivered through our exclusive managed email security appliance platform, which provides full 24×7 monitoring of email traffic and system health. With our offering, we are confident our customers and the market will be able to achieve top security and data protection with less administrative burden, greater peace of mind, and significant savings.”
Michael Thorson, Director of Infrastructure, University of British Columbia (UBC) a Sophos customer says: “The virtualisation direction from Sophos matches UBC’s strategy, allowing us to use our standard Virtual Server offering to host their email appliance (spam filter). It also enables us to move from eight outdated, stand-alone servers, to three new, higher-powered virtual servers. This not only saves UBC thousands of dollars in capital expenditures, it also creates a more manageable environment without having to worry about hardware upgrades going forward.”
John Gog, Network System Administrator, City of Birmingham another Sophos Customer says: “We’ve been using the Sophos Email Security Appliance since early 2009 alongside other Sophos solutions and all the solutions continue to do to exactly what Sophos promised – stop viruses, malware, and spam, and protect confidential information with minimal administration. The virtual email appliance fits in well with our increasing virtualised environment. It performs with the same reliability as the hardware appliance while providing operational savings by eliminating the costs associated with a physical device.”
