Something totally awesome and cool just happened. We launched a product at 9 PM, published a bug hotline, did a live switch in a live environment… and the line didn’t ring once in 6 hours that I’ve been sitting next to it.

What a difference working in a mature company.

I personally still have flashes of what it was like in the early days. Launching something and then having to roll it back because it wasn’t tested – launching bits and pieces of stuff as it’s ready while holding others back. Launching and having to roll back or launching and having it crawl because of insufficient testing or resources or (as I’m so often reminded) Vlad’s if evals of doom.

Few of us ever really envision a multimillion user application. I sure didn’t.

When I first wrote ExchangeDefender, I wrote it for a single server.

Then when I got big, I had to rewrite pieces of it so it can support the second server. Then came two different networks/sites. Then load balancing across networks.

Then.. now.

I really didn’t think in 2001 that we’d be in business of killing SPAM in 2011. And we aren’t. When you look at your typical SPAM filtering business, if they haven’t sold out to someone yet they are struggling.

If you aren’t using the SPAM filtering that comes with your firewall, mail server, Outlook or anything in between, you can get it for 35 cents at www.cloudblock.com and you don’t have to deal with the partner program, calling people and as I’m told – even reading the manual.

This seventh release of ExchangeDefender is all about the user experience and all about what users are actually asking for. The biggest and most important piece that you should invest in is the compliance archiving. Yet, statistically you’re not likely to do it even if the law requires you to – because users don’t want it the decision makers aren’t pushed for it internally the nagging issue of demand typically outpaces the stuff that’s necessary. To put it bluntly:

You’re more likely to buy stuff that you want than the stuff that you need but don’t necessarily want.

That is how we design ExchangeDefender. As you’ve seen over the last year we built a solid encryption product, large file web sharing product and a web filtering product.

Could we have done the same thing that everyone else in the industry has done – outsource it? Sure, but then it wouldn’t be free to you and we wouldn’t have the growth curve we’ve experienced over the past year either.

We build stuff our clients want.

When we do that, we don’t have to worry about selling it. Sure, it’s not perfect, but that’s what keeps all of us employed, right?

One More Insight

Those of you that work with us and actually take the time to talk to me either over the phone or at the events know how long the new UI and API had to be held back to allow folks that wrote applications on top of my 10 years of ExchangeDefender HTML.

I feel like this ginormous rock of pressure has been lifted off my shoulders and I can finally act on all the crazy drawings and ideas I’ve had for the product.

Email is the cornerstone of just about everything you do on the Internet. It’s your address. It’s used for invoices, subscriptions, receipts, registrations, confirmations, notifications, etc. You are not now nor will you ever going to have someone send you a password reminder via Twitter. Or your invoice via Facebook. Email, both in commercial and personal use, will continue to be key. But most of your development around email is about locating stuff – it’s all about the search. Honestly, biggest problems with email aren’t associated with discovery (locating stuff), they are in the distribution and organization. At least that’s my bet.

I hope ExchangeDefender 7 makes many of you that have worked with us for years lots and lots of money. For me, I’m just glad to see it grow up.

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