NANOG spam survey

[Doug Luce]

All,

I'm in the process of morphing my company into generalized corporate email
outsource agency.  The sales pitch: the average (1000+ user) company is
finding it difficult-to-impossible to run their own email server.  Just do
away with the problem, and give it to me.

The last couple of months in particular have been total hell.
Spam-producing worms have been enabling individual spammers to leverage
10,000 unwitting DSL/cable users to cream my servers.  In coming up with
the business plan, I'm betting on this being a universal problem.

To that end, I'd like to hear about people's experiences. I'm particularly
interested in a couple of results:

1) Is my experience common?  That is, do others find it excruciatingly
   painful just to operate a simple corporate email server?

2) What's working for people who are trying to address spam (and other
   problems, like email-borne virii, SMTP exploit scans, etc)?

As I develop the business, I'm going to have to come up with a way to
solve this problem.  I'm thinking that I'll have to sign one or more
partner companies that specialize in spam protection.  I'd love to find a
company that was down-to-earth and honest.  And, especially, a company
that is not investor-driven.  If anyone has recommendations, please let me
know.

I've been following the spam threads over the past couple of months, but I
haven't been able to distill solid recommendations out of them.  If I end
up with private responses, I'll summarize back to the list.

Thanks,

Doug