More companies are realizing there's little to be gained from managing e-mail themselves, but they still don't want their messages held hostage in a provider's data center. Enter Azaleos, a new breed of managed provider. A customer deploys Azaleos' Exchange appliance, the e-mail stays on-site, and Azaleos does the rest. ---Andrew Conry-Murray

	McCall wants customers to get the message

"At the end of the day, if customers were to turn off the service, they would be left with a fully optimized Exchange environment," says founder and CTO McCall. "We haven't lost any customers, but they are reassured that they still have all their data on-site." By contrast, enterprises might have a harder time retrieving e-mail from a fully hosted provider.

E-mail is a critical business application, but managing it can drain IT resources, particularly when employees expect to have around-the-clock access. Azaleos lets IT focus on projects and technologies that can deliver competitive advantage instead of baby-sitting Exchange at 2 a.m. The company offers the appeal of a managed provider model while addressing concerns about the privacy and security of e-mail. Azaleos never sees any messages, and all mail stays on premises behind the company firewall.

Microsoft and Google offer hosted filtering and archiving in which customers manage their Exchange infrastructure. Google also offers software-as-a-service e-mail. Other providers include MessageOne.

Azaleos sells Exchange appliances that it manages around the clock from its network operations center. Options include full management of Exchange, including patches; archiving and legal discovery; and business continuity and disaster recovery. It has an appliance to manage Research In Motion's Enterprise Server and has announced a VMware-based virtual appliance called OneServer Virtual Edition, a software-only version for customers using a virtual environment. The BladeMail appliance slots into a blade server.