By William Fellows
A software start-up called Mirapoint Inc in Menlo Park, California dedicated to revolutionizing clunky email services by selling a black box of services to mid-size companies and ISPs, is attracting some fairly heavyweight attention ahead of its public debut on December 2nd. Founded by Satish Ramachandran, who created Portola Communications and sold it to Nestcape and backed by a star-studded roster of private investors including Sun Microsystems Inc co-founder Andy Bechtolscheim, it’s little wonder ears are pricking. So what’s the deal? Mirapoint’s intellectual property is impedance matching software. It’s leveraging that against IMAP4 internet mail, access protocol mail, and messaging stores that will enable ISPs and large companies to deliver services that will reduce the overall cost of owning and maintaining email systems. It will enable users to access and manage multiple email accounts from one client while leaving mail itself on the server. Mail directories can be edited, searched, sliced, diced, copied and manipulated in a variety of ways. VP marketing Cheena Srinivasan who hails from Network Appliances, says the software can also be integrated into purpose built hardware – email appliances – as well as operating system software and application engines. With all manner of application-specific servers either now available or around the corner – it’s thinking of proxy, file, security, fax, print, internet, workflow and others – Srinivasan says IMAP4 or other ‘thin’ email servers are a natural addition. He’s looking at IDC numbers that suggest the email software market will be worth in the region of $2bn by 2000, while Dataquest estimates the market for small business ‘thin’ servers which could run Mirapoint software to be worth $1bn by 2000, with workgroup intranets servers at $300m in the same period.
The rub
Mirapoint touts Intel Corp’s recent introduction of a dedicated $700 device – which is the size of a paperback novel and designed to share email and LAN functions around small businesses – as evidence that the market is primed for its software. The Intel Email Station performs central email downloading, forwarding and sending and eliminated the need for multiple phone lines and ISP accounts for each employee. Mirapoint says its own tin-wrapped software adds value to an ISP or company’s server and storage components and uses new routing, directory, message organization and access techniques to speed mail functions. The software effectively breaks down the one-to-one client-to-server relationship, Srinivasan claims. While Mirapoint hopes to catch a ride aboard the wave of application-specific devices that will be email-enabled, the software will also support all forms of existing email clients and devices, though functionality may be limited to less tangible performance and reliability improvements than additional functionality. That’s because, Srinivasan claims, most email environments today cannot cope with IMAP workload. And there’s the rub. To fully leverage its software’s capability Mirapoint is depending on the build out of IMAP4 messaging services by the 3,000 or so middle-market ISPs with around 100,000 users each, plus the large companies it will target. Although Mirapoint can support POP3 maildrop services, its full potential will only be demonstrated – as far as we can tell as it’s not saying until December – from utilizing IMAP4 mail and message stores. It’s effectively asking customers to ditch free POP3 software in favor of Mirapoint. Free software is too fragile and unreliable for today’s requirements, it argues. Moreover while POP software enables ISPs to deliver email services to four times the number of users it costs to support one IMAP4 account, use of IMAP4 is expected to surpass use of POP3 within three years. Srinivasan swears Mirapoint is not a one-product company and claims other technology is on the way. We guess that it will try to attract the new breed of ISPs offering high-bandwidth Digital Subscriber Services, which will enable a full range of new email services to be made readily usable. Usenet group discussions show that Mirapoint has been badgering Netscape to improve some of its mailing functions – which Srinivasan says it’s done. We don’t know what the product is called and there’s no web site yet, though founder Ramachandran has also registered a domain called blacktop.com which leads to a defunct Strada Internet Services, a company that in turn spawned San Francisco- based DSL ISP, DSL Networks. We don’t know if this is significant and calls to the company were not returned by press time. Other Mirapoint investors include Chips & Technologies founder Ron Yara and Adaptive founder Charles Giancarlo.
