I have just returned from San Francisco and my first Ironport c-series CAB meeting. We have been using Ironport for over 2 years now. We first used it to fix our spam issue and that it did. It was the easiest sign off in Proximity London history. Through that we moved to the s-series for web security and joined the beta testing team. That has been one of the most enjoyable programmes it has been my pleasure to take part in. They are professionally run, bugs ironed normally by the next build and if not, you certainly know that engineering is working on them. You get full feedback on every conference call.

From our close involvement in this programme and others, we were invited to come out to the head office and take part in the Customer Advisory Board (CAB). We didn't need inviting twice. Having not been on a CAB before I wasn't sure what to expect. Their was the usual wining and dining, but the business days were kept very busy and the wining and dining was as much to do with work as anything else.

I thought our feedback would be taken down and fed back to the managers and engineers after we had left. I should have known better from this company. As the introductions were made more and more people joined the back of the room. One by one these people asked questions, voices I recognised from the weekly conference calls that you must have during beta cycles. These weren't just note takers, they were Project Managers, Engineers and User Experience Managers. We were talking straight to the people who make the decisions.

They loved to hear the good news about how well the products work, but really they were more interested in the negative, and how they could improve. Normally everyone says that, but from my experience Ironport will act on it. You might not see it tomorrow, or the next release, but on the road map it will appear.

If you ever get a chance to use one of their products, do so. If you ever get a chance to beta for them, do so. I like to say, "I don't care how many bugs may be in the product, mine won't be there." We are a cross platform environment and that is important to us. We can't wait for the next release because Safari might not work, or Messenger.

Tags: Anti Spam, Ironport, Security, wsa (s-series), esa (c-series)