During the customer feedback session at our successful European User Group meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, the one thing I kept hearing from our customers is how Sendmail is relied upon and known for “guaranteed message delivery.” The messaging teams within large enterprises have difficult job challenges. It comes as no surprise that they are constantly fighting the ever increasing volumes of unwanted mail (e.g. spam and virus-infected messages) and are busy provisioning mailboxes and gateways to service their internal “customers.” And, it’s clear, that every enterprise has architectural differences, many of them historical, about the set-up or internal ownership of their email infrastructure, resulting in use of different Anti-Spam or Anti-Virus engines. However, the one common trait they all share is the responsibility for ensuring WANTED email is delivered to the intended mailbox and is NOT affected by any false-positive filters.
Every customer I spoke to discussed that while Anti-spam is a nuisance and causes them to lose sleep from user complaints, the most important part of their job is to never let the mission critical email system go down or they could lose their jobs! They all take pride in using Sendmail as the guaranteed mail routing and delivery infrastructure. Many cited that during security and IT audits, the most stable and reliable software in the entire IT infrastructure was their Sendmail MTA. Examples they used about how critical it is to ensure the valid mail gets through were areas such as revenue recognition/orders being processed, where dependency on Sendmail getting the mail routed is the highest priority. Others cited investor relations messages — meeting critical time deadlines for delivering shareholder information — once again dependent upon the Sendmail MTA. One of our customers, a defense contractor, mentioned a time when their CEO was frantic about losing a mail message from the government, and it wasn’t until then when the realization occurred about how important the messaging infrastructure really is. The message I took away from all of these loyal and important customers is how dependent they are on Sendmail and the valuable role we play as both a technology provider and an enterprise service/support supplier for mission critical email. In their minds, “The mail must get through,” may be even more important than stopping unwanted mail and is the most misunderstood and unappreciated part of their jobs.