Sendio is a spam and email-based malware control vendor.
Technology
- Protects against email threats.
- Specifically, spam, virus, phishing, miscellaneous malware.
- Uses Kaspersky for anti-virus signatures and Commtouch for zero-hour virus protection.
- Product first launched in January 2004.
- Embodied in appliance.
Pricing
- Appliance comes in two flavors: 1) ESP 360, $1,995, for up to 2,000 users; and 2) ESP-430, $7,995, which scales to many thousands of users.
- Plus annual subscription that varies from $1 to $2.25/user/month, depending on number of users.
Main Competitors
- Postini.
- Barracuda.
- IronPort.
Competitive Strengths as Perceived by Sendio
- "Silverlisting"--an improvement on graylisting. Graylisting is a common anti-spam technique, where a receiving MTA requires email to be resent.
- A new, much improved version of challenge/response, called "Sender Address Verification."
- Generally, innovative use of human beings' responses. Verification is similar to that used in social networking systems such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and the buddy list model of leading IM systems.
- Overall result: very high spam and malware catch rates; very low false positives.
Company
- Founded 2003.
- 30 employees.
- Privately held.
- Funding to date: $8M. $2M initially from Momentum Venture Management and founder Tal Golan. Series A in October 2006 for $6M; investors include Kline Hawkes, Shepherd Ventures.
- Profitability projected in 2009.
- Revenues not disclosed; Ferris Research estimates them at $1M-$2M annually.
Other Comments
- Sendio's building a VAR network and believes it has an innovative plan to encourage this channel.
- Even if a vendor's claims of high catch rates and low false positives are true, it's hard to persuade the market of this, because all vendors make the same claim.
- Most malware control vendors are expanding (with difficulty) the stuff they control beyond email; e.g., to instant messaging, Web sessions, and data at rest.
... David Ferris