Michael Katz Founder of Message Partners agreed to do an e-mail interview with me regarding anti spam solutions. Michael Katz has worked with some of the most prominent customers in finance, banking, insurance as well as leading ISP's to implement Anti Spam and Archival strategy.

There are so many anti-spam solutions, what are the key issues that evaluators should focus on?
The first thing to do is to decide if you want to use a service or an onsite product. Services can be hassle free but they are expensive and can nickel and dime you with hidden charges. Many hobble together open source products and offer sub-par performance, though there are obviously some great solutions. Appliances are great options, but software solutions that you can put on your own hardware are smart choices as well. Regardless of your solution choice the key is to trial before you buy. Not all email is the same and you need a solution that will work for your email patterns. Another key element is flexibility. Every company has different ideas about how they want to handle their spam (i.e. quarantine, drop, mark subject) so make sure that your solution fits your policy and doesn't lock you in to choices.

How does open source play in to anti-spam solutions?
One word - huge. You would be hard pressed to find a single anti-spam solution that doesn't contain some open source elements. If you have time and knowledge you can build a great solution with open source only, but if you are like most people, with too many tasks and not enough time to focus, I would go for a commercial solution. Unmodified Spam Assassin based solutions will yield less than 90% detection and will be high on false positives.

So can you boil it down to one thought on an anti-spam solution?
Adaptability. To me this is number one. Spam changes quickly and you need a solution that can grow as threats evolve. Our product, MPP, is perfect in this regard because it can leverage commercial and open source technology elements and it is real easy to add new technology layers.

Thanks to Michael Katz for answering my questions. You can follow his blog here and visit MessagePartners.com for more information. If you are an anti spam vendor interested in briefing me about your product please leave a comment here. If you've got ideas, suggestions, questions or other ways to control spam let me know, by leaving a comment here.