Antispam/Client. Whether you work on a laptop, home-office PC, or corporate
workstation, you're constantly fending off spam. And, as in last year's Readers'
Choice awards, our readers' favorite client-based antispam product is Sunbelt
Software's iHateSpam. iHateSpam filters incoming email on most Outlook clients
and lets users create "friends" and "enemies" mail lists. The ability to retrieve
quarantined messages rounds out the tool's functionality. At $19.95, the product
is priced right for small business and home-office users looking for a straightforward
way to fight spam on the desktop.
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Antispam/Mail Server. For the second year in a row, readers voted iHateSpam
for Exchange their number-one server-based antispam product. iHateSpam for Exchange—which
Sunbelt Software replaced with the product's successor, Sunbelt Messaging Ninja,
in May during Readers' Choice voting—provides two engines for blocking
spam. Windows IT Pro reviewer John Green said that iHateSpam for Exchange "provides
basic server-based spam filtering at a reasonable price" and is "a good value
for server-based spam filtering" (see "Server-Based Spam Control" January 2005,
InstantDoc ID 44695). Our readers apparently agree.
Honorable Mention. Many readers chose Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) as their favorite server-based antispam product. Exchange 2003 SP2 isn't an antispam product per se, so we excluded it from consideration for an award. However, we want to acknowledge the powerful antispam capabilities in Exchange 2003 SP2, such as message-and connection-filtering, that many readers find useful.
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Collaboration. If you had a hunch that SharePoint would place in the
collaboration category, you were right: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
outstripped the competition and took first place for Collaboration solution
(as it did for Document Management/Imaging Software in the Business Applications
category). Windows SharePoint Services is included in Windows Server 2003 R2
and provides basic Web-portal, intranet, and database services for creating
collaborative Web sites. Does the award confirm that Windows IT pros' interest
in collaboration is spreading like wildfire—or just that IT folks can't
resist a free product? We'll let you decide. What's certain, though, is that
Microsoft is bent on making collaboration technology a core Windows application.
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Exchange Backup/Disaster Recovery. Virtually no amount of downtime is
acceptable for your organization's email users. Readers who count on Neverfail
Group's Neverfail for Exchange to keep downtime in check chose the product as
the number-one Exchange backup/disaster recovery solution, as they did in 2005.
The company's Neverfail for Windows product suite also took first place for
Backup/Recovery/Archive Service in the Disaster Prevention and Recovery category
this year. Neverfail for Exchange users praise the product for providing an
affordable business continuity solution for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs)
and for its switchback feature, which seamlessly syncs primary and failover
servers when the primary returns online.
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Exchange Migration. As the release of next-generation versions of Exchange
and Outlook looms, migration is on most Exchange administrators' minds. The
results of this year's Exchange Migration Solution vote were close, with Desktop
Standard ProfileMaker Outlook Edition emerging as our readers' first choice.
Although Desktop Standard doesn't bill ProfileMaker Outlook Edition as a migration
product, it's clear that readers find the product's ability to automate Outlook
user-profile configuration an indispensable part of their Exchange migrations.
Honorable Mention. Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation
and Migration isn't really a product—it's actually a set of online guides
to aid in planning and implementing a migration to Exchange 2003. Product or
not, many readers voted for the Solution Accelerator as their favorite Exchange
migration solution, enough to earn it recognition as an honorable mention.
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IM Solution. Most companies have gotten a handle on email security by
using firewalls, antispam and antivirus products, and security policies. Far
fewer, though, take similarly stringent precautions against IM threats. As IT
pros become aware of the IM problem, they're turning to appliances such as Barracuda
Networks Barracuda IM Firewall, this year's IM Solution Readers' Choice Awards
winner, to minimize IM security risks. Barracuda Networks combines an IM server,
IM client, and gateway to provide a secure, monitored, private IM network. As
IM threats continue to multiply and grow more complex and insidious, it's a
good bet that more IT pros will consider implementing IM security solutions.
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Mail Archiving. Facing competition from a growing number of third-party
mail-archiving solutions, Exchange Server 2003 took top honors for Mail Archiving.
Although Exchange 2003 has limited archiving capabilities, the vote might reflect
the fact that mail-archiving technology is still relatively new and unproven
and that many readers aren't yet familiar with such products. Rather than build
archiving into Exchange, Microsoft's strategy has been to acquire archiving
technology (as part of its purchase of FrontBridge Technologies earlier this
year) and offer it as a separately purchased service—Microsoft Exchange
Hosted Archive, which is part of the Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services portfolio.
Mail Server. No stunning upsets here: Readers overwhelmingly named Exchange
Server 2003 the best mail server, as they did last year. The choice might have
been influenced by last year's release of Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2),
which Paul Thurrott called "a major step forward" for Exchange customers (see
"Exchange Server 2003 SP2 Delivers New Features Without the Cost," InstantDoc
ID 48244). Exchange 2003 SP2 includes significant improvements, especially in
mobility, spam filtering, and security. The Exchange Intelligent Message Filter
(IMF) and Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer contribute to a well-rounded
product.
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