Google Apps Adds Postini E-Mail Services

A month after buying message security firm Postini, Google is adding its new acquisition's e-mail security, policy management, message recovery, and compliance services to Google Apps Premier Edition.

Google Enterprise Vice President and General Manager Dave Girouard said in a statement Wednesday that the Postini purchase allows the company "to deliver a more complete hosted solution for businesses of all sizes," so that businesses can have "more control over the administration and security" of Google Apps.

Centrally Manage Outbound Content

Google Apps is a suite of hosted applications for businesses, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, and the Start Page. The Mountain View, California-based company said that hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of users have adopted Apps. It also noted that Postini products are used by more than 36,000 businesses and 11 million users.

With the new Postini capabilities, managers can do such things as customize configurable spam and virus filtering that complements, in ways appropriate to that business, the filters already in Apps. In addition, businesses can centrally manage outbound content to add e-mail footers on the basis of business policy rules, block e-mails containing certain keywords or attachments, or stop e-mails with sensitive information.

If so desired, administrators will have "the option of visibility into all e-mail" for such purposes as compliance with labor or harassment laws or restoring e-mail that has been deleted.

To test out Apps, management can run it at the same time as another existing e-mail service, or have a department -- such as legal -- run Apps while the rest of the company stays with another e-mail solution.

Sacrificing 'Revenue for Market Share'

Google is showing that it is "really serious about the enterprise market," said Gartner analyst Matt Cain, by integrating an enterprise-grade e-mail hygiene service like Postini's.

He added that, by offering Postini at no...