As previously mentioned in the post that introduced our first set of thoughts on Internet Research Group’s (IRG) recently released research paper, “A Messaging Fabric: Case for a Messaging Infrastructure Layer,” Sendmail is certainly on the same page as IRG when it comes to our take on email infrastructure/messaging fabric. This is post two of four that we hope you’ll take time to read and comment on.
The Rules of Messaging Fabric: Why are they so important?
The middleware layer that integrates components of a larger, modern enterprise system, or Messaging Fabric, as described by IRG, can serve a variety of purposes for large enterprises. What most people may not know is that there are very specific rules that trigger specific email functions. And these rules dictate how the email engine will react when an email is sent or received. According the IRG, a few important aspects of rule definitions include: Flexibility in predicate choice, clarity of specification, flexibility in how the processing is specified and vendor neutrality. What do these rules mean and why are they so important to an IT organization?
At the heart of an SMTP email backbone is the MTA and the rules/policy engine. The policy engine can be thought of as the brains of the backbone while the MTA executes orders from the policy engine (the MTA also has some intelligence to make decisions). Without an intelligent policy engine, businesses run the risk of sensitive data leakage, compliance violations, and much more. On the flip side, the policy engine needs to be friendly and flexible enough so that messaging personnel can turn real business requirements into policies.
For example, the Sentrion Policy Engine, recognized as one of the most flexible and intelligent policy engines on the market, provides:
- Friendly point-and-click policy and rule builder
- Exponential number of rule combinations, message actions and conditions
- Sophisticated if-then-else constructs for building flexible yet highly intelligent policies
- Interface to Corporate Directories adding even more intelligence for decision making
- Open milter interface and custom API for extending policy functionality to other applications
- Ability to extract and scan over 300 file types, even when files are embedded inside one another
- And much, much more…
…our field team recently had an interesting email conversation around the notion of “envelop splitting” which ties right into this topic and the importance of a sophisticated policy engine. If you have not read the blog post on that topic, please take a minute to check it out—it expands on what we believe (and what IRG suggests) an intelligent and flexible policy engine is.
Stay tuned for our next post on the IRG paper: Government regulations’ affect on enterprise IT and the case for messaging fabric. In the meantime, please comment and share your thoughts on this subject.