Google’s paid email plans – Powered by Postini

Google on Tuesday unveiled a new series of “Powered by Postini” hosted email and messaging services that are aimed at simplifying its software-as-a-service offerings and cutting its prices. Google, of Mountain View, California, is reorganizing several of the email security and compliance services from its acquisition last year of Postini into three packages, said Scott Petry, founder of Postini and product management director in Google’s Enterprise Management division.

Postini-based spam filtering is now available (and compatible with all major e-mail clients) starting at just $3 per year per client. Google’s security services scale upwards in price and features from there. The highest tier of service is $25 per year and includes Google Message Security along with a full year of message archiving, retention, and discovery. All of these new services are fully compatible with a number of e-mail systems, including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novell Groupwise.

Google’s new “Powered by Postini” product line is also another piece of ammunition in the search giant’s ongoing battle with Microsoft over both online business collaboration and local office application housing. The vast majority of consumers and businesses still rely on Microsoft Office as a solution in both areas, but Google is betting that the combination of an attractive set of features and aggressive pricing can steadily whittle customers away from Redmond.

Google Message Filtering™

Postini’s industry-leading service for filtering incoming spam and malware

for companies looking to handle the growth of spam, virus and other email threats, and want to shift the burden off of on-premises resources

$3 per user per year

Google Message Security™

includes Google Message Filtering, plus enhanced virus detection, outbound processing, and content policy management

for companies worried about growing external security threats and internal risks, such as email data leaks or content compliance violations

$12 per user per year

Google Message Discovery™

includes Google Message Security, plus one year of message data archiving, retention, and discovery

for companies seeking to reduce security exposure, and improve legal discovery readiness and message compliance

$25 per user per year for one year of archived data (additional years of data retention available separately)

The new packages are part of the Google Apps platform and are available immediately at www.google.com/a/security, direct from Google, and through channel partners, and can be deployed within hours. The Google Apps suite also includes Gmail™ email services, Google Docs™ for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Calendar™ shared calendaring, Google Talk™ instant messaging, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page. Policy management and 90-day message discovery services are also available at no additional charge to Google Apps Premier Edition users.

Google Apps is used by more than 500,000 businesses and thousands of universities. Go to www.google.com/a for more information. These new services are Powered by Postini, and based on the same technology that protects email for nearly 40,000 customers and 14 million users a day. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPizh9EBW3o to hear what some of our customers have to say about using Google Message Security.