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Secure data upload was critical to using eMessage successfully. So, it was important for admins to understand how to configure the system correctly.

IBM eMessage was an enterprise-scale email marketing application. As an early example of a hybrid software application, eMessage provided the advantages of a cloud-based service (SaaS) and the security provided by locally installed (On-Premises) software.

According to this model, many operational services were hosted by IBM in a remote data center. However databases that stored sensitive customer data were installed in the customer’s network, behind the customer’s corporate firewall. For security purposes, all communication between the two environments originated as a request from behind the firewall. This example contains topics that describe configurations that were required to safely upload data to the hosted services environment. 

Audience: System administrators and support technicians.

Noteworthy: Setting up secure communication between the local installation and the hosted services environment was one of the most complicated configurations facing eMessage customers. To simplify the task for system administrators, I created several diagrams to illustrate the system architecture and communication sequence. I created the diagrams using an open source illustration application (Inkscape).

Tools:

• IBM DITA/Oxygen for authoring
• Adobe Acrobat Pro for reviews
• Inkscape to create the diagrams

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What is eMessage?
eMessage originally served as a strictly on-premises email service platform that was tightly integrated with the company’s flagship on-premises marketing campaign management product. The combination enabled marketers to build precisely targeted mailing lists and then engage that audience with highly personalized emails at scale, up to 1 million emails per hour.

The move to a hybrid architecture greatly simplified installation and maintenance costs for marketers. Much of the heavy lifting for email composition, delivery, and tracking was handled by IBM on the customer’s behalf in the hosted infrastructure. At the same time, the hybrid approach kept list composition, involving databases that contained customer personal data, safely behind the marketer’s security firewall.