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(Scott Lowe, TechRepublic) Between cloud computing, virtualization, and economic conditions, the data center has certainly changed form over the past 10 years. Where there used to be a box for each discrete workload, we now have boxes running virtualized server instances for dozens of workloads and some services run “in the cloud” and, relying on no local servers at all, simply depend on the corporate router to achieve their aims. Every day, more and more software-as-a-service vendors pop up offering their wares. And today, unprecedented economic conditions are forcing organizations of all types to deeply examine everything they do to make sure that every dollar spent directly supports the bottom line.

With this perfect storm of activity, what’s happening in the data center? In May, CNET quoted an IDC report indicating that worldwide server sales were down 25% in the first quarter when compared to sales of a year ago. In February, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan quoted another IDC report indicating that year-over-year server sales fell 12 percent. There are also published reports claiming that 2009 server sales will plummet more than 20 percent for the year.

Some possible reasons above for this downturn:
Virtualization. With dozens of workloads now running on a single box, physical server sprawl is a thing of the past (of course, virtual server sprawl is now here to stay!). Fewer servers in the data center directly equates to fewer server sales for each vendor. Virtualization has other benefits beyond simple consolidation; for example, virtualization generally reduces service deployment time and, when deployed in the right way, virtualization can be a boon for high availability.

Software-as-a-service. I doubt that we’ve seen the full impact of SaaS, but I can’t imagine that it hasn’t had at least a minor impact on server purchases and sales. Many colleges and universities, for example, are outsourcing student and, sometimes, faculty/staff email to the likes of Google and Microsoft, thus eliminating the need for a server infrastructure supporting those outsourced email services. No longer are those old servers on the replacement cycle.

(Jennifer Bosavage, ChannelWeb) A new survey finds that IT security professionals are suffering from "password fatigue" when it comes to using their mobile devices.

Credant Technologies, an endpoint data security vendor, surveyed 227 IT professionals for its study, many of whom were from companies with more than 1,000 employees. Thirty-five percent responded that they just don't get around to using passwords on their business phones and smartphones, although they may contain sensitive and confidential information.

The study found that IT professionals are only marginally better at using passwords than the general population; A survey conducted earlier in the year by Credant found that 40 percent of all users don't use passwords on their mobile phones. Different types of sensitive information are kept unprotected on smartphones and mobiles. For example, 23 percent said they store business e-mails, 12 percent have bank account details and 5 percent have credit card information unprotected on their devices.

1. About This White Paper
This white paper is sponsored by Gecad Technologies, the developer of AXIGEN, an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.  While Exchange is a solid and robust email platform that has roughly 150 million users in its installed base, it has a higher TCO than AXIGEN and does not support a variety of server operating system or client access modes. It is important to note that the goal of this white paper is simply to compare the features and benefits of both Exchange and AXIGEN, not to denigrate the many features and capabilities of Exchange.

2. What Should a Mail Server Do?
Email Is Critical to Users and Organizations. Virtually anyone who uses email at work understands how important this capability to getting his or her work done.  For example, an Osterman Research survey conducted during March 2009 found that the typical user spends 152 minutes each day working in email.  Based on an average workday of nine hours nine minutes discovered in that survey, the typical user spends 28% of his or her day doing something in their email client.  Interestingly, we found virtually identical results for both smaller and larger organizations with a difference of only one minute in the average time spent using email on a typical day.
In addition to spending more than one-quarter of their day in email, most users also check work-related email from home on weekdays after hours and on weekends.  Further, a large proportion of users access their work email while on vacation.

3. Deployment Scenarios
While there is some commonality of system requirements across small organizations, large organizations and carriers that provide hosted email services, there are differences in the requirements that each type of organization has for its email capabilities.

Low-end Enterprise Environments
In order to address the needs of small and medium businesses, an email server needs to have a variety of key features.  These include the basic features and functions needed to satisfy generalist email requirements, including:

1. It must be easy to install, configure and manage, particularly for organizations or satellite offices of larger organizations that may not have dedicated IT staff.
2. It must require as little additional expertise and infrastructure as possible.
3. It must have a low cost of acquisition and management.
4. It must provide robust security and filtering capabilities to protect against the growing variety of spam and malware traversing the Internet.

While Exchange can satisfy the email requirements for smaller organizations, it has a much higher total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to AXIGEN.