Message Systems Buys Rival Port25 Solutions To Create Email Infrastructure Giant
February 05, 2015
In a marriage of two email infrastructure rivals, Message Systems bought Port25 Solutions today for an undisclosed mix of stock and cash. With it, they have created a company that covers every email infrastructure need from small business all the way to mega messaging clients like social networks.
Message Systems CEO Phillip Merrick, says the acquisition gives his company unmatched coverage. It plans to incorporate Port25 as a stand-alone business unit inside Message Systems devoted to small-to-medium sized markets.
When I started looking at this deal, I mistakenly thought these companies might help deliver spam emails, but Merrick pointed out to me in an email exchange, that their services are about helping large organizations like Facebook, PayPal, financial institutions and so forth, deliver huge volumes of legitimate email to their constituencies, while ensuring the email actually hits its target.
“This is absolutely in the category of wanted email,” Merrick explained. “Everything from fraud alerts from your credit card company to the LinkedIn and Twitter digests you receive. Plus the newsletters you sign up for, and the retail promotions where you have specifically opted in.”
He added that his company works with others to help prevent spam and malicious emails.
“We have worked with major customers such as Twitter and LinkedIn, in conjunction with Google and others, to implement email security standards that make spam and phishing attacks far more difficult,” he said.
Message Systems’ roots as an independent company date back to 2008, but prior to that it was developed and sold by a consulting company. In total, Message Systems has been offering these services for over 15 years. Merrick says his company has been so successful in this space, he claims it moves 23 percent of the world’s legitimate email, and now with the acquisition of Port25, that number will be even higher.
With Port25, Message Systems gets its one thousand customers, which include Salesforce’s marketing cloud, CNN, New York Times Digital and many others. It also obtains a contrasting product that companies can download and install without a lot of help. Message Systems is installed in the data center and that usually involves a more complex implementation.
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