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Ananzi Mail downed by high traffic

By Warwick Ashford, ITWeb London correspondent
Johannesburg, 25 Nov 2003

Ananzi Mail is the latest locally-based Web service to be downed by high traffic volumes, leaving the estimated 50 000 users without an e-mail service.

Since Thursday last week, Ananzi Mail users have been greeted with a note saying the service is unavailable "due to unexpectedly large volumes of incoming messages".

Only last month eBucks customers were given a similar reason for the unavailability of First National Bank`s Internet banking service.

Mark Buwalda, Ananzi MD, says he takes full responsibility for the disruption to the service and apologises to all users. "We are extremely mindful that businesses need to access their mail, but we are negotiating a solution and expect to have the service back to normal by late this afternoon."

Ananzi recently transferred its mail to a new service provider in an attempt to provide a better service and offer larger mailboxes to paying customers, says Buwalda. "Unfortunately, we were unprepared for the large volume of incoming mail because our former service providers were unable to give us accurate figures for Ananzi mail within their system."

Buwalda says one of the reasons for transferring the mail service was to provide anti-spam facilities, but that volume of mail has to be received before the spam can be excluded. "We underestimated the demand. Our new system was unable to cope and we feel terrible about the interruption to the Ananzi Mail service."

Ananzi has chalked the incident up to experience and given the assurance that the mistake will not be repeated when the transfer is made to a new permanent platform in the coming days.

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