Google Apps and Postini now have a tighter fit, making it easier to manage routing and basic filtering of email to on-premise systems as well as email to Google Apps users. The move is one of several to be made over the next several months to make the email security environment part of Google Apps. A full Postini migration to Google Apps is expected by the end of 2013.
Google has been slowing integrating Postini into Google Apps, adding Postini features such as user policy management; email content filters; archiving, retention and eDiscovery with Google Apps Vault. As you may know, Postini is an app used by the enterprise to fight spam and other uses such as keeping track of data that has to be archived for compliance reasons.
Compliance can make it a bit tedious for administrators when trying to balance with an online service such as Google Apps. The trick is in the routing. Without routing to special archives, administrators have been hesitant to migrate to services such as Google Apps.
The Google Apps team is hoping that will change now that Google Apps administrators can use a new routing feature that will make it easier for groups like sales, support and operations to use generic email addresses such as sales@ or support@.
Historically, messages to these addresses typically have been routed outside Google Apps to on-premise ticketing or alert systems. Now Google Apps has the mechanisms in place to get messages to their proper destinations.
In the coming months, more Postini features will become part of Google Apps:
As we look ahead to 2013, we’ll continue these feature integrations and gradually transition Postini Google Message Security (GMS) and Google Message Discovery (GMD) customers to Google Apps. This will enable them to take advantage of the Postini features built directly into Google Apps that are more flexible, powerful and user-friendly.
Customers will be notified later this year. Access to the Postini control panel will eventually be built right into Google Apps.
Does this mean the end of Postini? It looks like it. Google is pulling all of its enterprise apps to fit with Google Drive.Google’s vision is to use Google Drive as the hook for people to use Google’s collaboration tools such as Google Docs. Email security is just one more way to make that full integration a reality.
The move is another example of how Microsoft and Google are battling head-to-head. Email security is an important weapon to include as more customers consider how to use the cloud to do more of their work.
Here’s more about the Postini transition: