Zenprise and the BlackBerry Blackout of 2/11/2008

At Zenprise, we do not revel in outages and issues that cause service disruptions or service deterioration for our customers. However, when such incidents do occur - whether in the Exchange messaging infrastructure or in BlackBerry service, we take pride in the fact that Zenprise is able to help customers by providing early warnings and timely alerts about such outages, or conditions that may lead to one.

The accolades are coming in, from customers and prospective customers alike. The difference between having Zenprise and not having Zenprise on the afternoon of 2/11/2008 couldn't be clearer.

An email from a satisfied customer - the Canadian subsidiary of a large consumer electronics manufacturer:

Dan, zenprise is amazing. For Feb 11’s network outage. I was alerted immediately. When I called Rogers, they are not even been informed by RIM at that time. Thanks for the good monitoring software.

Figure 1: The end-to-end view of BlackBerry service shown in the Zenprise Console. Alerts for connectivity issues to RIM's SRP network and a high number of pending messages for a user are displayed in the above screenshot of the User Dashboard

An email from another organization that was affected by the outage (not a Zenprise customer):

“After having to call 2 different carriers the other day and waiting on hold for about 20 minutes each, I am ready for a change. These IT engineers and managers that are at their laptop most of the time don’t understand how much our execs and sales people that are out on the road depend on their Blackberry. When RIM had the outage, our entire Management lead team was out of the office and every one of them only had their Blackberry with them. Needless to say, an hour after he called me the CIO was not too happy when I finally was able to give him a definite answer that the problem was with RIM’s network. I have been trying to decide whether to send your message up to him, but I think I just answered my question as to whether I should. I’ll get back to you within a week to give you an update.”

Not to forget the accompanying media attention:


BlackBerry Outage Caused by Upgrade

TMCnet: Zenprise on BlackBerry Outage


InformationWeek: RIM Confirms BlackBerry Outage, Investigates Cause


ZDNet Exclusive: BlackBerry outage indicated by IP address connect refusals


CNBC: BlackBerry Outage Caused by Upgrade


BlackBerry Outage Caused by Upgrade


InfoWorld: Outage knocks BlackBerry users offline


BlackBerry Cool: North American outage reported


PC World: RIM's BlackBerry Service Getting Back to Normal


BlackBerry outage leaves 8 million users disconnected


Why Your Blackberry Crashed



Outage blamed on upgrade

Zenprise alerts customer about data outage at AT&T

The end-to-end view of BlackBerry® service provided by Zenprise has always been of (a lot of) interest to me. Besides detecting specific issues impacting users, Exchange and infrastructure issues affecting BES, what has been particularly exciting is our ability to detect issues with RIM's SRP network, and also those with carrier networks in use by Zenprise customers.

Both of the above types of outages are rare, but when they do occur, the resulting user impact, help desk calls, and time spent troubleshooting before narrowing it down to RIM or the wireless carrier results in many wasted man hours.

Zenprise for BlackBerry has successfully detected (and provided advance warning for) a RIM outage in the past (read previous post: "ZDNet: Zenprise gave indications 2 hours before the BlackBerry outage").

Reproducing the equivalent of a RIM outage in a test environment isn't difficult, but how does one reproduce a carrier outage? Could we ask AT&T, Verizon or Sprint to turn off their wireless network so we can test Zenprise? Or just have them switch off the data network? Of course, there are other more realistic workarounds in test environments, but how do we validate this in real-world situations?

What just popped in this morning from my Google Alerts should make Zenprise, and our customers, very happy:

My company just installed the Beta Version of Zenprise Tuesday of this week. This morning we started getting requests where our Blackberry users were not able to send messages. Instead of our regular ‘reboot the BES to fix all’ process we normally would follow, I was able to see that the all the devices affected were from the AT&T network. I immediately contacted our AT&T rep and she was able to confirm an outage that was affecting the central and northeast regions. Although we have not purchased Zenprise yet, this was an excellent real life proof of concept of its ability to save my team hours of time troubleshooting.

More in Data outage nails AT&T subscribers

Zenprise at Fenway Park: How the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox's IT Shop Keeps BlackBerrys in the Game

I haven't posted too many updates from Zenprise lately. Zenprise v3.3 will ship soon, and the regular stream of customers throughout the year has been a great validation of Zenprise's approach to monitoring and real-time troubleshooting of Microsoft Exchange Server and BlackBerry environments.

The exciting news - standing here during the attendee party at TechEd 2006, I couldn't have thought of this possibility. Yes! The Boston Red Sox became a Zenprise customer earlier this year (Go Red Sox!).

Al Sacco writes about the Red Sox's Zenprise experience in this CIO magazine article.

Excerpts:

Twenty-four/seven connectivity is a must for the 2007 world champion Boston Red Sox's behind-the-scenes champions, and the team counts on a mobile device management (MDM) product from Zenprise to ensure that its BlackBerrys never strike out.

"Within four days of having the product in, we were able to correlate root cause and be able to show ROI from that," Conley says. "Within a month, a problem that was ongoing for five to six months just disappeared." Better yet, he notes, fewer people were calling his team with problems. Instead, the Zenprise tool began offering early warnings on issues so he could report them to users before noticeable problems appeared.

Conley says that since the day his team installed Zenprise for BlackBerry, the Red Sox IT staff has been able to find root causes for every BlackBerry-related issue they've encountered, major or minor, and promptly address those issues with confidence that the suggested fixes will work.

Today, Conley has only one person who spends any of his time—a mere 10 percent—on BlackBerry support. Zenprise does the rest, he says. A year ago, two IT staffers handled BlackBerry support and the organization had only a quarter of the devices it supports today.

Read more on CIO.com: "Eyes on Zenprise: How the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox's IT Shop Keeps BlackBerrys in the Game".

Zenprise in Network World's '9 Wireless Network Companies To Watch'

Zenprise was named as one of the '9 Network Wireless Companies To Watch' by Network World.

From Network World:

Why it’s worth watching: Zenprise for BlackBerry software was launched in February 2007. Two months later, when RIM’s North American BlackBerry network crashed, Zenprise customers were perhaps the only people on the continent who knew hours before anyone else that 1) there was a problem, 2) it was serious, and 3) it was in RIM’s NOC. What everyone else saw as a third-party service that customers were dependent upon, Zenprise understood to be a critical enterprise asset that customers needed to manage like any other. The software makes it possible to actually enforce service-level agreements and improve support to mobile e-mail users.

Zenprise Wins Best Of TechEd 2007 Award

An interesting week in Orlando, as TechEd weeks generally are. The Zenprise team returned home with the Best of TechEd 2007 award! That's 2 years in a row - first time a start-up has won Best Of TechEd two years in a row! What's a cause for cheer for most of us - this time it's in the Mobility category, for Zenprise for BlackBerry! (Last year, Zenprise for Exchange won the Best of TechEd in the Messaging category - read previous post "Zenprise wins Best Of TechEd 2006 award").

It was great to see customers visibly excited about Zenprise for BlackBerry, and the new User Dashboard feature in Zenprise 3.1 (in beta right now, this is what attendees saw at our TechEd booth last week) promises to make the job of IT/messaging/mobility help desks a lot easier. For Exchange, the User Dashboard provides a quick snapshot of all the important user properties and real-time performance stats of a user's mailbox server. For BlackBerry, the User Dashboard shows BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry device-related properties and performance stats, and also an end-to-end availability state for a particular user. The dashboard also enables instant testing of a user's device.

The rapid-fire software release cycles of our times means we're working on some exciting new features for v3.2, in our mission to go where no Exchange and BlackBerry monitoring & troubleshooting products have gone before. :)

Zenprise Named Best of TechEd 2007 Finalist

Great news from the TechEd front for Zenprise - the just-released Zenprise for BlackBerry is a finalist for the Best of TechEd 2007 award in the Mobility category! That's 2 years in a row - probably a first for any company, for 2 different products in 2 different categories!

Last year at TechEd, Zenprise for Exchange was a finalist and won the Best of TechEd 2006 award in Messaging category by Windows IT Pro [read previous post "Zenprise wins Best Of TechEd 2006 award"].

Zenprise for BlackBerry brings the same automated troubleshooting, root cause analysis and performance management capabilities to Research In Motion's BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Exchange. It automatically detects problems that affect BlackBerry availability, performance, and integrity - including user-facing issues like one-way synchronization of Calendars, issues with carrier networks like Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc., and those affecting RIM's SRP network. (In fact, Zenprise was able to provide advance warning of RIM's recent network outage that impacted BlackBerry users in N. America. Read previous post "Zenprise proactively detects BlackBerry N. America outage!" for more details).

An added benefit for Zenprise for BlackBerry customers is the ability to manage BlackBerry from within the Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 console, using the Zenprise Connector for SCOM 2007.

Clearly we're very excited about being a Finalist again for Best of TechEd 2007, and even more so about the next release of Zenprise for BlackBerry - currently in beta, and the interesting capabilities it brings.

ZDNet: Zenprise gave indications 2 hours before the BlackBerry outage

Before the world knew: insider’s diary of BlackBerry service shutdown by ZDNet's Russell Shaw -- For two hours before the BlackBerry email outage two weeks ago, the Zenprise BlackBerry service monitoring system in place at the County of Alameda (Cal.) data center in the 1.5 million-populaton county seat of Oakland "gave us some indications connectivity was intermittent," senior server engineer Paul Hinsberg told me just a few minutes ago.

The engineer adds that as the afternoon progressed, the (scored) confidence levels of successful BlackBerry network connections as scored by Zenprise gradually descended from Very High-This Is Fixed to " 'I am completely sure I cannot connect. '"

Read the complete article (and get a glimpse of the performance chart from Zenprise for BlackBerry) on "The BlackBerry Beat" over on ZDNet.com.

BlackBerry Outage Cause of a Break-up!

In an interesting twist on last night's BlackBerry outage at RIM, Network World's John Cox reports how the extended outage resulted in one user's girlfriend breaking up with him. After a bad argument the couple had earlier in the day, user Rafael Paz' girlfriend sent him a few emails. When she did not receive a response, she "called it off", according to Paz.

The article also provides other examples of how many users suspected "something was wrong" (as opposed to the early detection by Zenprise), and talks about how Zenprise watched the whole disruption unfold through one of its customers, the County of Alameda, Calif.

Read the complete article titled "In-depth: BlackBerry becomes Crashberry as RIM’s net fails for hours" on NetworkWorld.com.

Zenprise proactively detects BlackBerry N. America outage!

BlackBerry® users in North America were without email last night (Tuesday April 17th), thanks to an extended system-wide outage in Research In Motion's network that handles email.

Zenprise customers report that Zenprise for BlackBerry automatically detected this outage in the BlackBerry SRP network at 5:19 PM last night, and were able to pro actively inform users about the outage and its underlying cause!

Interestingly, I did not find out about this outage myself until early this morning, when CNet's News.com reported it (No, I don't carry a BlackBerry with me... - Bharat). The report has since been updated to reflect the changed condition - BlackBerry e-mail is back, but problems remain.

This is another example of how Zenprise products - Zenprise for BlackBerry and Zenprise for Exchange - help IT departments in early detection of issues in messaging infrastructure along with their underlying root cause, and get step-by-step resolution instructions to resolve the issue. To state this using some marketing buzz words - it's a pro-active way of managing IT (one that I hope will spill over to other parts of IT infrastructure in the future - Bharat).

Needless to say, we are "very excited" about these capabilities of Zenprise. :)

SearchCIO.com: BlackBerry troubleshooting a breeze for retail chain

SearchCIO.com just published this article by Andrew Hickey, titled "BlackBerry troubleshooting a breeze for retail chain", about how Zenprise for BlackBerry helps troubleshoot BlackBerry issues.

The level of interest of BlackBerry (Enterprise Server for Exchange) customers in Zenprise amazes me - needless to say, it's beyond my expectations... :)

At Exchange Connections, Orlando

Arrived in Orlando earlier this morning. After last week's tiring trip to this city for TechMentor, and having my laptop being lost/stolen on the way back (a painful story of Delta Airlines misrouting my luggage - yes, one of those occassions when I ended up checking in all my luggage including the laptop bag, recieving 1 out of 2 bags, getting the second one couple of days later with the laptop missing! If you see a Dell Latitude 610 with an Exchange Server 2007 sticker on the lid... nevermind, perhaps that's wishful thinking...), I'm already travel-weary.

Nevertheless, I've been looking forward to Exchange Connections.

If you're here, do stop by and say hi - I'll be at the Zenprise booth.

Just released - Zenprise Connector for Ops Manager 2007

Earlier this morning, Zenprise announced general availability of Zenprise Connector for Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 (the new version of the product formerly known as Microsoft Operations Manager or MOM).

Now you can use Zenprise from within the Ops Manager console. Additionally, you can manage BlackBerry servers - using Zenprise for BlackBerry - from within the same console!

I found the following quote from Microsoft System Center GM Larry Orecklin interesting (I don't generally quote from press releases, but this one is of particular interest to me :) - “Microsoft is committed to working with industry partners who enable our customers to better automate the management of their Blackberry and Exchange environments. Zenprise’s integration enables our mutual customers to extend System Center Operations Manager 2007 to be even more proactive in solving their end-to-end service management problems.”

More details about this new baby on Zenprise.com.

Zenprise named Gartner Cool Vendor in IT Operations Management

Reputed analyst firm Gartner has just named Zenprise as a Gartner Cool Vendor in IT Operations Management space!

After winning a number of awards between last year and this - including InfoWorld's 2007 Technology Of The Year award (Best Exchange Troubleshooting Solution), SearchExchange.com's Product Of The Year award (Exchange Server Reporting & Management), and the Best of TechEd at Microsoft's TechEd 2006 event, amongst others, being named a Gartner Cool Vendor further validates the Zenprise approach to discover root causes of symptoms.

Gartner analyst David Coyle writes, "Zenprise offers an innovative solution for not only alerting users when there is downtime or degradation in the Exchange environment, but also provides root-cause and resolution guidance".

"Zenprise for Exchange is a root-cause analysis and alerting tool for Microsoft Exchange that offers advanced problem resolution capabilities that the Exchange event management tools, such as Microsoft Operations Manager and HP OpenView, do not", writes Coyle.

Zenprise recently released Zenprise 3.0 for Exchange. Amongst other cool features like the Zenprise MailFlow Engine - which detects mail-flow and performance issues between Exchange servers in the same Routing Group, between Routing Groups, and to/from the internet, Zenprise also added a new module for BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Exchange. For IT organizations that use monitoring tools like Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), Zenprise offers modules that integrate with those monitoring apps, providing the ability to use a single console for monitoring and managing Exchange.

According to the Gartner report, (Zenprise) can help prevent issues in an Exchange environment, (and) reduce the mean time to repair when there is an issue.

Clearly, we're very excited about this accolade from Gartner!

Zenprise Webinar availabe OnDemand: Updating Daylight Savings Time for BlackBerry & Exchange

Zenprise held a webinar titled "Updating Daylight Savings Time for BlackBerry & Exchange" on Friday March 23rd. The archived webinar is now available on the Zenprise web site [registration required].

Zenprise 3.0: Now available for Blackberry

Zenprise just released Zenprise 3.0 - its first product that helps troubleshoot issues with RIM's Blackberry Enterprise Server (for Exchange), besides some great new functionality for Exchange Server environments.

With mobile email usage predicted to skyrocket over the next few years (According to projections by Radicati Group, number of mobile devices will shoot up from 12 million last year to almost 200 million in 2010), managing the mobility infrastructure presents its own challenges for messaging folks.

Some of the exciting new functionality in Zenprise 3.0 includes the Zenprise Mailflow Engine that detects mailflow problems not only within your Exchange infrastructure (between servers in a Routing Group, and between different Routing Groups) but also mailflow to and from the internet! Further, it also alerts administers if mail delivery performance degrades.

It's a first step, and a significant one, at providing invaluable functionality to keep messaging systems humming.

In addition to Mailflow, Zenprise 3.0 also has the capability to dynamically detect internet-facing smtp server addresses - whether these are Exchange servers or non-Exchange SMTP hosts. It automatically checks Realtime Block Lists (RBLs, or IP Block List Providers in Microsoft's Exchange Server 2007 terminology) and alerts the administrator if the IP addresses are listed.

More information about these products on zenprise.com.

Zenprise wins SearchExchange.com's Product Of The Year Award

Barely into 2007, Zenprise has yet another feather in its cap - SearchExchange.com has selected Zenprise as Product Of The Year in Exchange Server Reporting & Management category! Runners up in the category are Quest MessageStats and IPSwitch.

"Zenprise Inc.'s second-generation namesake product received excellent marks from our judges for performance, ease of integration, ease of use, functionality, value and support -- and garnered a perfect score for innovation.", says SearchExchange.

What's really exciting and a big compliment - according to SearchExchange, one judge commented, "Zenprise 2.0 is an Exchange Server administrator's new best friend. It is a very innovative diagnostic and predictive tool that provides an email administrator with an easy-to-follow series of tasks that will correct an Exchange Server problem."

Coming close on the heels of InfoWorld's 2007 Technology Of The Year Award [read previous post "Zenprise wins InfoWorld's 2007 Technology Of The Year award"], this is certainly an interesting beginning of the year 2007 for Zenprise!

Watch out for some exciting new developments in upcoming versions, including support for a new product and some cool new features.

Zenprise as starship Enterprise: Meet Spock & Captain Kirk

"TWO ENTREPRENEURS in Fremont are hoping to reach 'Star Trek' status with their e-mail troubleshooting software", starts this report on InsideBayArea.com and in Bay Area newspapers. It's titled "E-mail doctors arrive on Zenprise to help".

I'm mostly clueless about Startrek - memories of watching some of the early episodes as a teenager have all but faded, but I like the idea of Zenprise as starship Enterprise (I wouldn't blame you for beginning to suspect the founders came up with this name because it rhymes with USS Enterprise), and you can see the Zenprise versions of Spock & Captain Kirk in the accompanying picture, along with some other crew members. The mission: "To boldly go where no software has gone before"... ? :)

I'll reserve the more elaborate comments about this analogy for a non-existent internal blog...

Zenprise wins InfoWorld's 2007 Technology Of The Year award

Seems like an interesting start of the year for Zenprise - Zenprise 1.0.3, reviewed by InfoWorld last year and given a big thums up by the IT journal [read previous post "InfoWorld gives a thumbs up to Zenprise 1.0.3"], has now brought home InfoWorld's 2007 Technology Of The Year award as the Best Exchange Troubleshooting Solution!

The InfoWorld Technology of the Year award identifies the best and most innovative enterprise products that have fundamentally altered the IT landscape. Zenprise was selected from over 200 products reviewed by InfoWorld.

"Zenprise 1.0.3 does one thing and does it very well: troubleshooting. It looks over your Exchange servers, finds problems, and recommends easy-to-understand solutions that will actually fix the issues. Using historical trends built from your Exchange data, Zenprise even proactively identifies potential issues before they cause problems", says InfoWorld.

Happy New Year all, this one may prove to be even more exciting than 2006!

Zenprise achieves Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status

Another interesting development at Zenpise - we just achieved Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status with an ISV/Software Solutions competency! Yes, that's like moving up a notch in the Microsoft eco-system.

Zenprise is also a member of Microsoft Management Alliance and the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Operations Manager 2007 TAP programs.

Webinar: How to Simplify Exchange Troubleshooting – An In-Depth Look at Tools

Windows IT Pro magazine recently held a webinar titled "How to Simplify Exchange Troubleshooting – An In-Depth Look at Tools" (access the archived version here - the link has beex fixed). The webinar is presented by Jim McBee, Exchange MVP and author of popular Exchange books like Exchange Server 2003 24Seven (the recently updated edition has been renamed "Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Advanced Administration"), and Ahmed Datoo, VP of Product Marketing at Zenprise.

The webinar traces a typical Exchange troubleshooting process and takes a look at the tools and utiilities available to troubleshoot Exchange issues and how to effectively use them. You can also get a sneak preview of how Zenprise helps you troubleshoot your Exchange issues and provides step-by-step resolution instructions.

Zenprise wins Best Of TechEd 2006 award

The Zenprise team returned from TechEd last week with some exciting news - Zenprise 2.0 was awarded the Best of TechEd 2006 in Messaging category by Windows IT Pro magazine! [Windows IT Media Names 'Best of Tech Ed 2006' Winners ] We're all very excited about this, as it comes close on the heels of several other events that I've blogged about recently, notably:

- Zenprise named one of the Top 15 Tech Startups To Watch by InfoWorld magazine
- Zenprise named finalist in SIIA's Codie Awards
- A big thumbs up by InfoWorld in their Exchange management product reviews (v1.03)

From Michael Otey, Technical Director of Windows IT Pro:
"Zenprise provides a powerful automated email problem resolution solution that collects operational data from across the entire Exchange infrastructure. It constructs a baseline profile showing typical system activity and performance levels and automatically analyzes deviations from these baselines, matching the symptoms against possible causes. The product then provides a series of steps that the administrator can follow to resolve the problem".

Other finalists in the Messaging category: Research In Motion's Blackberry Enterprise Server, and Quest Spotlight on Exchange.

Looking back, it's hard to believe we didn't have a released product at TechEd last year... we released Zenprise 2.0 (yes, there were versions 1.x before this.... :-) at TechEd this year!

Don't miss "Troubleshooting DNS for Exchange" session at TechEd

Another year goes by, and TechEd 2006 is already here! If you're going to be in Boston next month, as a TechEd attendee you'll have a long list of sessions to pick from, with more than a few sessions you're interested in being scheduled at the same time.

I've always faced this huge dilemma of choosing which sessions I want to devote my time (definitely a scarcer resource during TechEd) to.

Zenprise architect Sekou Page will be presenting a Birds of a Feather session titled: Troubleshooting DNS for Exchange: Confronting The "Black Box". Sekou is a principal Exchange knowledge architect at Zenprise, with plenty of infrastructure experience and over 50 Exchange migrations to his credit. He writes a column for Redmond magazine.

If you work with Exchange and DNS, this should be one of the interesting sessions to look forward to at TechEd.

Session Abstract:
Troubleshooting DNS for Exchange: Confronting The "Black Box"
Thursday, June 15, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
DNS is often considered a "black box". That is, once configured and working it is hard to figure out why it "breaks" or what might be wrong in a deployment where the service should be fully functional. The focus of this session is - how to troubleshoot DNS issues as they relate to email - specifically, Microsoft Exchange. This session will share in a group discussion on DNS and the core components of DNS and the approaches one should take when troubleshooting specific classes of issues: including connectivity, zone integrity, performance, Active Directory DNS and name resolution. So, by thoroughly understanding the different classes of DNS issues and the troubleshooting process required to approach a specific type of issue, DNS will no longer be considered the "black box" it once was.
Session Type(s): Birds of a Feather

Zenprise in InfoWorld's "Top 15 Tech Startups To Watch"

More news from the Zenprise front – we’re now one of the “Top 15 Tech Startups To Watch” according to InfoWorld magazine! In a cover feature in the magazine’s current issue, InfoWorld features the companies that they rate as "Top 15 Tech Startups To Watch". In InfoWorld’s words, “Look closely, and you’ll notice that today’s enterprise tech startups are much smarter and more targeted than the broad, change-the-world ventures of the go-go ’90s. During the past couple of years, we’ve seen countless demos from companies whose singular ingenuity has brought a smile to the face of even the most jaded editor" (Emphasis mine, because I'm particularly delighted about that observation!).

Needless to say, we're very excited to be on this list!

We're getting great feedback for the just-launched version of the product - Zenprise 2.0, and the stream of feedback we've started getting from customers about different Exchange (and related) issues - which regularly gets added to our Symptom Database - is helping us make Zenprise more capable in detecting and resolving Exchange issues in your deployments.

Read the complete article - 15 Tech Startups To Watch - on InfoWorld's web site. (Or go directly to the section of the article that talks about Zenprise - "Zenprise spots Microsoft Exchange failures".)

Zenprise Named Finalist in Best of TechEd 2006 Awards

This just came in - Zenprise has been named a finalist in Windows IT Pro magazine's Best of TechEd 2006 Awards in the Messaging category.

Close on the heels of becoming a finalist in the "Software Newcomer of The Year" category for this year's Codie Awards (read "Zenprise Named Finalist In Codie Awards 2006") and getting a big thumbs up from InfoWorld magazine (read "Infoworld gives a thumbs up to Zenprise 1.0.3"), this further validates the coming of age of the Zenprise approach to real-time troubleshooting and diagnostics of Microsoft Exchange and email environments.

Over 250 products were nomiated for the awards. Other finalists in the category are Research In Motion's Blackberry Enterprise Server, and Quest Software's Spotlight on Exchange.

All I can say is - it feels great to be in the company of RIM and Quest!

Zenprise 2.0 released

Yesterday was the dreaded tax day in the US when many tax-payers who wait for the last day (and some - myself included - who wait for the last few hours/minutes of the last day... ) scramble to get their tax returns filed.

Extended by a couple of days (the last day is usually April 15th - this year that day fell on a Saturday, and thus the extension), the day marked an important milestone for Zenprise - we launched Zenprise 2.0, the much-awaited release of what's quickly becoming an interesting and exciting tool for Exchange admins.

Zenprise is a "real-time troubleshooting and diagnostics" tool for email environments (read "Microsoft Exchange", it also includes coverage of components Exchange depends on, like Active Directory, DNS, connectivity, et al).

Many Exchange folks greet Zenprise with skepticism, like I clearly remember myself doing when I first encountered the product and the company last year, prior to the release of version 1.x. Interestingly, in its first version the product got a very encouraging thumbs-up from IT journal Infoworld (read "Infoworld gives a thumbs up to Zenprise 1.0.3") and landed the company amongst the finalists for Software Newcomer of The Year award at the Codie Awards this year.

For most part, the skepticism is justified if you're not familiar with the product, the technology, and the folks behind it. I did not grasp the breadth and depth of Zenprise till day 2 of being a Zenprise employee and becoming more familiar with exactly how Zenprise does what it does. Needless to say, now I'm a big fan of the technology and as we head into the Exchange "12" release cycle, I am quite excited about its potential.

So what does Zenprise do?
Simply put, it detects problems with an Exchange email environment, pro-actively, in real-time. It runs thousands of rules provided by Exchange experts that look for whether things are broken, and whether Exchange is working as it should. When it detects issues related to configuration, performance, connectivity, et al - it alerts the user and provides step-by-step instructions for correcting it.

To be clear, Zenprise does not promise to detect every single Exchange and Exchange-related issue out there - that would be an incredibly hollow claim to make if you've spent any time working with Exchange and all the nuts & bolts of the machinery under the hood that makes it work. However, we're taking small steps every day to get closer to that shifting goal. The promise is to proactively detect problems related to configuration (or mis-configuration), and performance specific to customers' Exchange deployments. One of the big benefits from the step-by-step instructions Zenprise provides is a dramatic reduction in resolution time.

Zenprise 2.0 adds many new features. Notably (not a comprehensive list, and mostly free of marketing-speak :-):
- a brand new UI that beta customers have provided excellent feedback about
- improved performance
- self-healing. One of the promises of this new technology that promises to troubleshoot Exchange is to be able to troubleshoot itself too! Zenprise 2.0 automatically informs users about issues with the Zenprise Management Server itself and how to resolve them.
- cluster support: 2.0 marks the beginning of cluster support
- support for external knowledge: if you've been keeping track, we've signed up some major publishers to include knowledge from your favorite Exchange books. This in itself is an excellent topic for another post.
- enhanced prediction: here's where Zenprise really shines. It automatically creates an ongoing performance baseline in an Exchange deployment and checks against this historical performance to predict and identify potential problems.

It is quite satisfying to talk to customers and beta users - seeing and hearing about the kinds of problems detected and potential issues and disasters averted. Along the way, we keep adding more knowledge, including that based on feedback from customer environments.

Zenprise Named Finalist In Codie Awards 2006

More Zenprise News - the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA - formerly the Software Publishers' Association) has named Zenprise as a finalist for the Codie awards in the "Software Newcome Of The Year" category. The Software Newcomer Of The Year award is for a new software or company whose product or service has the potential for significant impact on the industry, either through technological advancement or new business models.

Coming close on the heels of the excellent reviews from InfoWorld magazine for our 1.x product (read "Infoworld gives a thumbs up to Zenprise 1.0.3") and the great feedback that's streaming in from the (Zenprise) 2.0 betas, we are thrilled to get this peer recoginition from the software industry as a finalist for Software Newcomer Of The Year. Past winners of this award include SalesForce, Intuit, Webtrends, Vignette, Plaxo, and Adobe to name a few.

Established as the "Excellence In Software Awards" in 1986 and renamed as Codie Awards - from the word 'Code', alluding to its basis in the software industry according to SIIA - in 1993, the awards "showcase the software and information industry's finest products and services".

Infoworld gives a thumbs up to Zenprise 1.0.3

Infoworld just reviewed Exchange monitoring & management tools. The following tools were reviewed:

1. Dys Analytics Email Control 5.0.2
2. Microsoft Exchange 2003 Management Pack for MOM
3. Quest Spotlight on Exchange
4. Zenprise 1.03

Zenprise 1.0.3 came out with flying colors. Zenprise doesn't compete with monitoring & managmenet products like MOM and Quest SOE (in fact, it's a complementary product to these) - it got the highest score in the pack - 8.4, compared to Quest SOE (7.8), Dys Analytics (7.6) and Exchange 2003 Management Pack for MOM (7.4).

I’ve tried hard not to include every single observation from the review here, and understandably it was a hard task to do. Here’s what Infoworld had to say about Zenprise 1.0.3 (emphasis mine):

“Zenprise is very different from the other tools in this roundup: It doesn’t manage servers or send alerts. Instead, it focuses on troubleshooting Exchange errors, which it does extremely well.”

“Although many administrators tend to regard expert systems with skepticism, Zenprise provides useful diagnostic advice and clear, accurate instructions on how to correct a problem.”

“….and unlike many online help systems, Zenprise provides clear, useful instructions on how to resolve problems. Its real-time, automated diagnosis and resolution extends to other network problems, such as Internet connectivity, firewall blips, and DNS hiccups as well -- all issues that can impact Exchange performance. And as opposed to many historical tracking systems, there’s no need for the administrator to guess at thresholds for alerts because the software creates its own thresholds based on all data collected to date.”

“…With its proactive troubleshooting capability, historical trending, and expert diagnostics system, Zenprise could well keep troublesome Exchange networks from ever becoming a real problem -- or at least dramatically speed resolution of problems when they to occur.”

It feels great to get a thumbs up from a reputed IT publication like Infoworld – and in the same league as Exchange 2003 Management Pack for MOM and Quest SOE! To top it all, this is for a 1.0 product!

Working on the Exchange knowledge engineering side of things at Zenprise, I can go on ad nauseam about how we’re building a great troubleshooting tool for Exchange, but I would rather you read about it on Infoworld.com here.

Zenprise 2.0, the next release of Zenprise, is going beta soon and should be in users’ hands in a few weeks.

Troubleshooting email problems costs companies over $1 million annually

Osterman Research recently conducted a study, sponsored by Zenprise, Inc. (my employer), that will be of interest to CIOs and messaging groups in corporate IT departments. The study, titled "Email Troubleshooting: The Cost and Impact to the Enterprise", came up with some interesting findings. A brief snippet:

- companies with greater than 5000 employees are spending over $1 million annually to troubleshoot email problems
- average time spent solving an email problem is 2 hours 47 minutes
- 47% of respondents said troubleshooting email problems involves 4 or more departments
- Over 60% of the cost of troubleshooting email problems comes from departments other than the email administration team

Zenprise makes software for real-time diagnostics and resolution of email problems across the Microsoft Exchange environment.

You can download the report from here.