One of the interesting acquisitions by Google, in my point of view, was their 2007 acquisition of Postini. In fact, it was the main driving force behind somewhat successful push of Google Apps into the enterprises. Today, Google is wearing the Postini mask again as it attempts a long term strategy to get more exchange users into their service. Google just announced that they are introducing Google Message Continuity Powered By Postini.
Simply put, Google Message Continuity service is nothing but syncing your on-premise email with Google’s cloud based email service so that you can use Gmail when your on-premise mail is down. Google is using the architecture built for their enterprise services to synchronize your on-premise email with Gmail. It also users other features built into Postini architecture ensure that your data won’t be lost at any point while being delivered to you with maximum efficiency.
Suppose if your on-premise email goes down, you can use Gmail to continue working as all your information in the on-premise exchange system is synced to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts. Whatever you do on Google Apps during downtime is synced back to On-Premise Exchange email when it is back up. This will ensure that there is business continuity even during scheduled or unexpected downtimes.
What does this mean?
Well, to be frank, this is nothing but an attempt by Google to slowly train enterprise users to Google Apps interface and when, sometime in the future, enterprises want to move to cloud based Exchange offering by Microsoft, they can be easily convinced to move to Google Apps instead. There is nothing to this story other than Google trying to enter the “consciousness” of enterprises through backdoor and prepare their users for any future migration t Google Apps.
So
It is aggressively priced (Like their Google Apps offerings) at $25 per user per year for new customers or an additional $13 per user per year for current Postini customers. So, it is actually a low cost email management solution which offers business continuity to organizations helping them save a lot of money which they would have otherwise lost during the downtimes. As I said earlier, Google gets to train these enterprise users to get comfortable with Gmail so that they will eventually move away from Outlook.
Related articles
- Introducing Google Message Continuity, powered by Postini (googleblog.blogspot.com)
- Google Wants to Backup Your On-Premise E-Mail Server to the Cloud (readwriteweb.com)
- Google preps Gmail-based backup for Exchange (macworld.com)
- Exchange Server Down? Gmail Will Fill In Until It’s Back Up (GOOG, MSFT) (businessinsider.com)
- Google Launches Tool to Get Companies to Back Up Their E-mails With Gmail (mashable.com)
- Meet the newest Exchange Server backup provider: Google (zdnet.com)
- Google Offers Exchange Insurance (informationweek.com)
- Google morphs Gmail into Microsoft backup service (go.theregister.com)
- Google launches Gmail-based backup for Exchange (infoworld.com)
That’s exactly what I said here http://2fatdads.com/u/hg and here http://goo.gl/fb/k8Xgf
It’s a brilliant move on Google’s part, I bet Steve Ballmer is thinking “Damn! Now we gotta offer Exchange sync to Hotmail/Live Mail. We should just hire those people that are smearing Assange and set them on to Larry and Sergey!”
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