Lucid8 Doing Well with Exchange Maintenance Tool

by Alex Woodie

When Microsoft sees a market opportunity, it's still not too big to move quickly. In the fight against malicious software, the software giant acquired Giant Software in December, and announced plans to buy Sybari yesterday. This is good news for Exchange users, but what about the non-security-related threats to Exchange, problems emanating from the database within? Microsoft hasn't done much here, to the satisfaction of Lucid8, which has carved out a comfortable niche recovering Exchange crashes and, more recently, selling a database maintenance tool.

Lucid8 launched its disaster recovery service for Exchange users from its headquarters in the Seattle, Washington, suburb of Newcastle in 1998. The more companies it helped back on their feet after Exchange Server crashed, the more Lucid8 learned about Microsoft's e-mail server and the JET database underlying it, says Troy Werelius, Lucid8's president and chief executive.

"We were pulling them from the fire when Microsoft says they were toast," Werelius says. "Our customers would say, 'You're wonderful, but we don't ever want to go there again.' In 1998, we introduced GOexchange. It encompasses everything we know about Exchange."

Exchange's database, like every database, requires periodic maintenance to ensure that it continues to run at peak efficiency as things get added, moved around, and deleted. Strange occurrences, like duplicate e-mails and weird error messages, are warning signs that the database is in need of attention. These problems are caused by bloated Information Stores, inefficient index pointers, and other minor inconsistencies in the database, and they will eventually bring Exchange to a screeching halt if not fixed. When that happens, you need the services of a disaster recovery specialist like Lucid8. The goal of the GOexchange tool is to prevent a disaster from happening in the first place.

Microsoft does provide utilities to help users clean up their Exchange databases. However, they can be difficult to use, and they can cause problems if used incorrectly, Werelius says. "They're DOS based, arcane, and very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing," he says. "It can be like putting a shotgun in the wrong hands. Real bad things can happen."

Werelius admits Exchange users can do most maintenance using the tools Microsoft provides. However, it would require an expert, and they would need to be accurate 100 percent of the time to prevent bad things from happening. "Is that how you want to use your talent?" he asks. Additionally, GOexchange keeps a log of all its activities; whereas administrators would need to collect and collate that data manually if left on their own.

GOexchange is based on Microsoft's DOS tools and APIs, but it does some things that Microsoft's do not do. The software works automatically across all versions of Exchange, running on practically any Windows platform. Users don't need to know anything about the Microsoft utilities or database structures to use GOexchange. Just set it up to run when everybody is off the system, every few weeks or so, and it will automatically clean up the database. Depending on the size of the Exchange data store, it could take a few hours or a day to run; it chews through about 4 to 12 GB per hour, Werelius says.

Since it started to market and sell GOexchange to new accounts in 2001 (it was sold primarily to Lucid8's services customers before then), the company has seen the bulk of its sales shift from disaster recovery services to licenses for GOexchange. Consulting revenue paid for the development of GOexchange, but now the product brings in 85 percent of the company's revenue, and over the last two years, sales of GOexchange have increased by 463 percent, Werelius says.

"It's been great growth," Werelius said during a telephone interview from Maui last week. "I'm just as surprised as anybody else that they [Microsoft] haven't put together an automated Exchange solution. I guess they're dealing with bigger issues." There's no shortage of projects in Redmond, Washington, these days. But in terms of easing the headaches of Windows servers administrators, two projects that come to mind are the new Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 release and the new disk-to-disk backup solution, Data Protection Server, due in the second half of 2005.

There isn't enough money in the automated Exchange tools market to interest Microsoft, Werelius says. "It's about how much pain is involved and how much revenue for Microsoft," he says. "They're undertaking huge initiatives building features and functions and robustness. But they feel certain things in their OS can wait until they become a problem in the forefront." Although Microsoft plans to eventually move off the JET database and will likely then introduce easier-to-use administrative tools for Exchange, there simply aren't enough people screaming loudly enough right now to warrant interest by Microsoft in a sub-$100-million market, Werelius says.

"Microsoft is a huge company, and they're driving the world of technology," Werelius says. "But they're not quite as nimble as they used to be. No doubt that over time--the next two major releases--they will address this specific problem. But that's three to four years from now, minimum. Until that time, there's a great need for a product like ours."

The latest version, GOexchange 3.0, was launched last May. Lucid8 sells GOexchange under an unlimited use license, and under a one-time use license. License fees for unlimited use range from $595 for a 10-mailbox system, to $4,995 for an unlimited number of mailboxes. Single-shot-use licenses range from $145 for a 10-mailbox system to $1,195 for an unlimited number of mailboxes. Annual maintenance fees for the unlimited use version of GOexchange range from 30 percent for a one-year deal to 23 percent per year for a three-year deal.

For more information and trial downloads, go to www.lucid8.com.