Spam--and spam fighters--have come a long way in a couple of years. Last year, we gave a Best Antispam Tool award for the first time, and the winner, Sunbelt Software's iHateSpam Server Edition (SE), also won the Rookie of the Year award. This year, Vircom's ModusGate edged iHateSpam out of the winning spot by one vote. ModusGate and iHateSpam led a big field of 21 server-side spam fighters (plus some write-in candidates)--clearly spam is a big problem with many possible solutions.

ModusGate, an antispam appliance, is designed for organizations that already have an email infrastructure that they don't want to modify. You can install the ModusGate gateway in front of any email server on any network type without reconfiguring or modifying your existing products. You can deploy ModusGate in front of or behind your corporate firewall, and it can scan incoming or outgoing email messages. ModusGate's unique approach to fighting spam also won it the Most Innovative Product and Best Software Product awards--and it picked up the Best Service and Support award.