New Lotus Protector 2.8
August 22 2011
While I was on vacation last week, IBM announced a new version of Lotus Protector for Mail Security, version 2.8.
The new version features enhancements in a few areas. I asked Sean Brown, the product manager for Lotus Protector, to give me a few hints on the release. Sean wrote:
The release is focused around seamless integration into our customers existing social business infrastructure (Microsoft and Lotus), minimizing operational support tasks and simplifying security solutions for end-users. I.E. Traditional security products break the way users work, Protector helps them work better and more securely. The common example I use, a traditional DLP solution will stop a user from sending credit card numbers in email. Protector sees the same credit card number, but knows that the sender is in Finance, the recipient is the companies Bank and knows to encrypt the email before it leaves the local domain. And the beauty is that the user didn't have to learn anything new, they simply created an email and sent it.This release even more clearly establishes that Lotus Protector is a solution not just for Lotus Domino but for a variety of other collaborative back-ends, even including Microsoft Exchange customers.
Real-time content inspection for social business - Detect uploaded viruses to Lotus Quickr for WebSphere Portal 8.5.1 and IBM Connections 3.0.1 in real-time, delivering instant protection and feedback to collaboration users, and minimizing lost productivity from viruses.
Data Loss Protection - Integrated content extraction filters, designed to not only look within an email but also deep inside common office documents such as spreadsheets and presentations for confidential or proprietary information.
The new release also introduces a new licensing model. In response to market feedback, we are offering two additional alternatives to licensing Lotus Protector for Mail Security -- fixed-term license and processor value unit-based pricing. I know many of you dislike PVU pricing, but it will likely be less expensive for Protector than per-user pricing. Fixed-term also introduces some flexibility to establish a more-predictable annual cost rather than a larger upfront license purchase followed by lower subscription costs. We retained the per-user licensing model as well.
Congratulations to the team on this new release!
Link: Lotus Protector for Mail Security >
Post a Comment
- 2
Colin Williams | 8/22/2011 6:00:11 PM
Entirely off topic but seeing as you mention PVU licensing;
We're a 550 user Notes shop with 7 Domino servers and currently going through a renewal process. For the first time in 12 years with the product, our BP is interested in the number of cores on our Intel Xeon boxes. Apparently Domino is 50PVU per core so for the most recent server purchases, even though entry level, these are 4 core CPUs and thus require 200PVUs for each Domino server!
Given our low user numbers and geographical distribution forcing us to have a relatively large number of servers vs users, PVU pricing seems a really poor fit.
Please tell me there is a better alternative?
- 3
Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 8/22/2011 7:47:25 PM
Colin,
Crunch the numbers to re-buy w/Express licensing instead. Express has no Domino server license cost. Express has no Domino server license cost. In the last year, Ed's group has been instrumental in fixing the Express line. The anonymous restriction for web sites, clustering restriction, and Directory Assistance restrictions, have been lifted, leaving only the Partition restriction which most of us don't do anyway. You may find it cheaper, especially 2nd year out. It's available to companies sub 1000 users.
If you are using some of the "free" Enterprise add-ons, Tivoli, Websphere on same box, etc., you may want to check and see what is still included w/Express. That could also affect the number crunching.
Alternately, you can migrate to VMware or another hypervisor (which is what we use) and only give your VMs 2 processors, or even 1 processor, if the server is light use, that will reduce your PVU costs right there. However, the money you save might be going to VMware instead.
We actually did trade savings on ditching MS Office for Lotus Symphony for VMware licensing a couple years back now. Except for the occasional "bad conversion", it was well worth it as Symphony support is included in our Lotus licensing for "free".
- 5
Lars Berntrop-Bos | 8/23/2011 3:38:42 AM
Note: Sub capacity licensing is also referred to as Virtualization Capacity in { Link }
Tip: if you use PVU licensing ALWAYS obtain sub capacity licensing, so as to be able to be flexible.
Availability: A lot of technologies are available to support the sub capacity licensing model! A partial list: IBM PowerVM, Citrix Xen, Red Hat Xen, VMware vCenter Server, VMWare ESX & ESXi, Microsoft Virtual Server and Hyper-V, SUSE Xen. See: { Link }
- 6
Lars Berntrop-Bos | 8/23/2011 3:38:53 AM
CEO: You might need several licenses to fully cover your needs (This area is not as cleaned up as the Express offerings, maybe this will be addressed next. Kudos to Ed and his team for the monumental effort with the Express offerings) For coverings see: { Link }
Using the correct licensing strategy, Domino can be a LOT more affordable than you think.
For easy comparison of first time licenses and renewals I like to use the e-store from Gemini Systems. { Link }
They offer a wonderful overview of the different License costs, e.g. new, renewal, reinstatement, trade-up
- 7
Lars Berntrop-Bos | 8/23/2011 4:01:34 AM
Just noticed: although CEO Business Collaboration and CEO Lotus Communication differ a lot in initial price and capabilities, the renewl price (e.g. long term cost) is the same. And quite low, a Domino Enterprise CAL (Domino server license separate) renewal lists for about $43, renewal for Business Collaboration (including license for Sametime Standard, Quickr etc, etc and as many Domino servers you want) lists for about $67.
A significant plus of user based licenses (Express & CEO) is that you can deploy as many Domino servers as you need. Even local ones on a laptop serving XPages if need be.
- 8
Dennis Heinle | 8/23/2011 10:06:32 AM
Ed, you might also want to mention that they dropped the price of the per user licensing model and there is a competitive upgrade price. We just bought Protector for less than the cost of 9 months for our current hosted service and yearly maintenance with protector is the cost of 2 months use with our current provider.
- 9
Brian Shelden | 8/23/2011 10:41:48 AM
We are interested in Protector, but not interested in hosting it. Will it be offered via SaaS?
- 11
Colin Williams | 8/30/2011 6:52:07 PM
All the IBM run software audits have only ever been interested in number of CPUs, so this renewal is the first ever conversation I've had with our BP around number of cores. Now looking at other options..incl. Express and even grandfathering Notes/Domino. The next few weeks will be interesting.
More detail in the wiki: { Link }