Newsletter Sign-Up

Receive the latest technology news and information.

TrueSwitch tool a key to MSN's fight with AOL

By Brian Sullivan

May 21, 2002 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The tool behind Microsoft Corp.'s $10 million campaign to grab customers from rival America Online Inc. comes from a 12-person company in downtown New York.
The Microsoft Network (MSN) Internet access service today announced TrueSwitch, a tool created by Esaya Inc. that provides the means for customers of Dulles, Va.-based AOL to switch their e-mail accounts and membership to MSN.
Making that migration easy is why Esaya created TrueSwitch in the first place, said Mark Kasiraja, the company's chief operating officer and co-founder, in a telephone interview this morning.
Kasiraja said he and his partner, Esaya CEO Thomas Isaac, built TrueSwitch to allow users of one Internet service provider (ISP) to easily change to another without much trouble. MSN is the company's first major customer, he said, although other companies have used it for smaller operations, such as moving employees from one e-mail system to another
"We're specifically targeting ISPs," Kasiraja said. "We drew it up and marketed to them."
But Kasiraja said the tool could be used for any operation in which information needs to be transferred from one Web-based system to another. And the company would be willing to tailor the tool to meet each client's specific needs, he added.
The tool, which operates on Java-based machines running Unix, is at its core a data integration, mapping and transformation engine. It logs on to AOL using the customer's current user ID and password and then collects all of the necessary information about the user's e-mail address book and account and migrates that information to MSN, Kasiraja said.
The process includes the following steps:

Transferring old e-mails and calendar information.

Notifying all of the user's contacts that the e-mail address has changed.

Forwarding e-mail from the AOL account to the new MSN account for as long as the old account remains active.

Canceling the old account.

Along with the tool, MSN has launched a $10 million promotional campaign to get users to switch their allegiance. AOL said it had no comment on the TrueSwitch tool or MSN's campaign.
Kasiraja said that if the MSN campaign is a success, Esaya should have no problems scaling TrueSwitch to meet a rise in demand. He said Esaya monitors load, and if demand goes up, the company simply adds more servers to the operation. That, he said, is all that is required to scale the tool.
"It is a pretty seamless exercise," Kasiraja said.
Another aspect of TrueSwitch is that it goes into an application through the front end, as opposed to the back end. Kasiraja saidthis allows business rules to remain intact during a change.
Kasiraja said that pricing is based on a flat licensing fee plus a per-user fee. He did not get into specifics, and MSN wouldn't comment on how much it spent on the tool. But Kasiraja said that the higher the licensing fee paid upfront, the lower the per-user fee would be.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Jump to comments

Networking

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Informatica 9 Launch: Transform your Business. Transform your world.

LIVE Nov 10, 2009 12:00 PM ET

Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change: The Open Solution

LIVE Nov 12, 2009 02:00 PM ET

How to Secure and Accelerate Your Oracle Applications
Learn about the escalating application performance and security challenges facing corporations, today!

Aligning IT to Business: The Rising Importance of Application Delivery Networks
Application Delivery Networking (ADN) will play a vital role in helping enterprises incorporate strategic technologies to achieve business initiatives.

Optimize Performance of Datacenter to Datacenter Traffic
To get the backups and database synchronizations completed on time, enterprises rely on WAN optimization from Blue Coat.

Mitigate Risk, Lower Costs and Improve Network Efficiency
Create a stable IP network that not only meets today's challenges, but is flexible enough to also meet future demands.

Enterprise Application Delivery: No User Left Behind
Gain the ability to deliver applications to all users, using any device, across any network.

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future
Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service?

Practical Strategies to Accelerate Business Applications Across the WAN
Discover how Blue Coat SG appliances, uses five essential techniques to speed delivery of internal and externally hosted business applications

IPAM: Slashing Network Costs
Slashing Network Costs by Consolidating and Automating Core Network Services

Infonetics: WAN Optimization Appliance Market Highlights 1 Q09
Vendor market share positions shuffled once again in 1Q09, learn more now!

Horror stories: Managing IT Across Multiple Locations
How one extra sharp IT manager eliminates daily agony, hassle and repetition.

All White Papers | All Webcasts

Computerworld Reports

8 Questions To Ask About Your Intrusion-Security Solution

Computerworld Technology Briefings IT Service Management

Computerworld Briefing - Analytics: The Art and Science of Better

All Computerworld Reports

	Networking
	Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
	Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
	The Weekly Top 10
	Cloud Computing

resource center