Sendside looks for new, safer way of doing biz

They call it the "Wall of Shame" - those hundreds of pieces of mail, bills, statements, legal documents and faxes pinned to the walls of the offices at Sendside Networks. It is the shame of the waste of paper and the clutter it created, but perhaps most of all, it is the inconvenience and cost that it represents.
    For the Midvale company, the wall also presented a business opportunity, a chance to address the issue with a new way of doing e-mail, a way that promises secure communications for businesses and individuals.
    For banks, credit card companies, health care providers, law firms or any company that relies on paper statements, bills and sensitive documents sent by mail, carrier, overnight or fax, Sendside says it has a solution that guarantees security and can dramatically lower costs.
    "We're a potentially disruptive technology," said William Borghetti, founder and CEO, about the company's impact on the U.S. Postal Service and companies such as FedEx and United Parcel Service.
    Today, e-mail is almost exclusively based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, an insecure system that is open to spamming and pfishing, in which outside e-mails seek personal financial information from the recipient by purporting to be from a bank or other institution.
    SMTP e-mail also is largely a one-way street. A user's bank might notify the user that a credit card statement is ready for viewing, but that requires the user to get on a browser and log on to the bank's Web site. To pay the bill, the user probably has to click on a different page.
    "SMTP is a 25-year-old outdated technology," said Borghetti.
    Because of its limitations, most secure correspondence and documents still are sent through the mail or by companies such as FedEx.
    Leaving SMTP behind, Sendside last month began rolling out a software and communications network that promises to change the way individuals and businesses send and receive messages and documents, and to perform Web-based applications online. Sendside routes messages securely through its own network, where users are registered and able to communicate with only people and companies they designate, using current Web browsers and existing e-mail addresses.
    Under Sendside's vision, statements will be accessible in e-mails sent to users by banks or credit card companies without an additional password, and users will be able to view them and pay any bills from within the same messages.
    "I thought the business offered a lot of potential for making communications in an electronic age truly secure," said Erik Christiansen, an attorney with Parsons Behle & Latimer who was an early investor.
    With only 10 percent of any bank's customers using online services to receive statements and make payments, Sendside says even a small increase in participation and corresponding decrease in mailings could mean millions of dollars in savings for larger enterprises.
    Health care is one area where Sendside officials see the potential for widespread use of their products. Statements that today are mailed to customers because they contain federally protected information could instead be sent through the company's network.
    "We have the potential to go deep into health care," said Borghetti.
    "It's evolved into a very powerful business tool," said Todd Parsons, founder and vice president of product development at Buzzlogic, a San Francisco software company that advised Sendside during its product development.
    Before Sendside, Borghetti founded Campus Pipeline in 1997 in his garage. The company, which provided intranets for college campuses, was sold in 2002 to SCT Corp. for $42 million in cash.
    Looking for new opportunities, Borghetti came up with the idea of a new corporate communications system that would help alleviate the mass of mail he was receiving from businesses. With the help of the Wayne Brown Institute, which seeks to foster technology entrepreneurship, Borghetti and partners Dave Colbert and Bill Boyd in January 2005 founded Sendside Networks. After consultation with potential customers, the company created products for individuals, small business and larger enterprises before entering its marketing and sales phase.
    The company has been funded by a small group of private investors who have raised $4.5 million. Sendside has about 15 full-time employees and another 20 contractors. Borghetti said he expects the company to double the number of employees within the next year, mostly on the marketing and sales sides.
    tharvey@sltrib.com