From: "Lori Pike" <lorip@ActiveState.com>
To: "Jon Corbet" <lwn@lwn.net>
Subject: Perl Email Management Software for Sendmail: PerlMx the power tool for sysadmins debuts at Linux Showcase
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:24:22 -0700



Perl Email Management Software for Sendmail: PerlMx the power tool for
sysadmins debuts at Linux Showcase

ATLANTA, GA  October 12, 2000 - ActiveState, the leading provider of
Internet programming software and services announces the release of PerlMx,
a tool that enables system administrators to create customized, powerful
mail scripts easily.  A mail filter engine that operates as a plug-in to
Sendmail products, PerlMx, provides for rapid prototyping, debugging, and
deployment of custom e-mail filtering solutions.  PerlMx is implemented at
the server level, is extensible, scalable, and currently runs on Linux,
Solaris, and HP-UX.

PerlMx combines the speed and robustness of Perl, the most popular Internet
programming language, with sendmail, the de facto standard Internet Mail
server responsible for moving the majority of all Internet Mail.  PerlMx
readily integrates with the Content Filter API available in Sendmail Switch
2.1.  This latest product offering from Sendmail provides administrators an
unprecedented level of control over their Internet backbone with features
such as administrator alerts, attachment filtering, and subject line
filtering.  PerlMx’s persistent run time allows real time processing of
every SMTP transaction received by Sendmail.  Unlike other email management
products, the PerlMx approach enables system administrators to write
customized scripts to immediately reject messages based on size, content,
sender or recipient.

“We’re delighted to bring the power, quickness and reliability of Perl to
the millions of sendmail users,” said Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO,
ActiveState.  ”Given the business necessity of email communication, PerlMx
will prove invaluable for administrators who are now able to write a filter
in five minutes to block viruses and spam at the server level before they
hit a user’s inbox.”

Business communication over the Internet is predicted to increase
exponentially in the near future.  Indicative of this Forrester Research
forecasts that “permitted” commercial email messages will grow from three
billion today to 250 billion by 2002.  With the average number of commercial
email messages that US online consumers receiving annually rising from 40
last year to more than 1,600 by 2005, according to Jupiter Communications.

“Perl is a natural choice for manipulating email given its recognized
strength in text processing,” said Greg Olson, co-founder and EVP Business
Development, Sendmail Inc.  “ActiveState’s PerlMx is a revolutionary new
approach to email management that provides rapid design, development, and
deployment of reliable email filters to serve the unique content management
needs of enterprises.”

PerlMx provides:
·	Mail Archiving: selectively log e-mail traffic based on arbitrary criteria
·	Volume Accounting: keep track of e-mail volumes to generate statistics
·	Custom Routing: redirect mail to third parties based on sender, recipient
or other external parameters
·	Spam Control: implement your own heuristics for weeding out "spam" e-mail
·	Keyword Scanning: add custom actions based on keywords in e-mail
·	Content Rewriting: add new headers or change existing content of to
incoming messages

"PerlMx brings professional server-side email content management to the real
world.  Whether you’re an ISP that wants to keep track of email bandwidth
consumed by users, or a large corporation that must implement evolving email
content policies, PerlMx will help you create the custom solution that not
only fits your needs, but grows with them," said Gurusamy Sarathy, PerlMx
Project Lead, ActiveState.

"PerlMx is a great way of incorporating the text and database processing
power of Perl into Sendmail," said Jim Baker, Chief Technology Officer,
Empact Solutions.  "Often the incoming mail processing requirements for
businesses who do high volume email processing can be overwhelming, PerlMx
offers a way to address those problems quickly while easily customizing the
solution."

PerlMx is free for educational and personal use.  It is $495 US per
processor for commercial use.  OEM versions are also available.

About ActiveState:
ActiveState is at the forefront of open source infrastructure software,
providing Internet programming products and services for all popular
operating systems including Linux, Solaris, and Windows.  ActiveState's key
technology platforms are Perl, the Internet's most popular programming
language and Python, a user-friendly scripting language.  ActiveState
solutions provide enterprise-wide deployment of Perl and Python, improved
programmer productivity, and seamless integration with other technologies.
ActiveState believes in the evolution of core Perl and Python technologies
and is committed to broadening the appeal of Perl and Python by making
available easy to install packages for popular operating systems.  For more
information visit www.ActiveState.com.

About Sendmail, Inc.
Sendmail, Inc. provides mission-critical Internet messaging solutions to
corporations and service providers. As the primary source of commercial
software based on sendmail, the de facto standard Internet Mail server,
Sendmail, Inc. leads the development of Internet Mail standards and ensures
their early implementation in its commercial and Open Source products. The
company is headquartered in Emeryville, Calif., with offices in the UK,
Germany and France, and distributors in Europe and Asia Pacific.  For more
information on Sendmail, Inc., visit its Web site at www.Sendmail.com.

Media & Analyst Contacts:

Lori Pike
ActiveState
604.484.6417
LoriP@ActiveState.com

Barbel French
Sendmail Inc.
510.594-5495
publicrelations@sendmail.com

© ActiveState Tool Corp 2000.

ActiveState and PerlMx are trademarks of ActiveState Tool Corp.  All other
company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.