Google Tacks On 10 More Years To E-Mail Archiving Program

By Michele Masterson, ChannelWeb

Aimed at businesses that need to retain and store e-mail, Google (NSDQ:GOOG) has added 10 more years to its e-mail archiving service, Google Message Discover.

"Regulations and guidelines like the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure put pressure on IT organizations to ensure that e-mail is properly retained and can be reliably located and preserved in the event of legal discovery," Google said in a company blog. "Coupled with the growing importance of e-mail as a store of intellectual property, e-mail archiving has become both legally necessary and critical to the operation of your business."

According to a Google whitepaper, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure applies "to virtually all organizations, in all industries, including private, public and non-profit organizations. In short, if an organization can have a civil lawsuit filed against it, then the FRCP should figure prominently in that organization's data management strategy."

The hosted archiving service costs a flat fee of $45 per user per year for up to 10 years of retention, and includes spam, virus, policy-based TSL encryption, audit reporting and content filtering, via security solutions from Google subsidiary Postini. A one-year subscription to Google Message Discovery services costs $25 per year.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based message archiving system can be used with Lotus Domino 6.5-7x; Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Exchange Server 2000 or 2003, standard or enterprise editions; Microsoft Small Business Server With Exchange Server 2000 or 2003, standard or enterprise editions; and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

The messaging security market is big business and poised for growth. According to a study by IDC last year, the industry is expected to double from $2 billion in 2006 to $4.8 billion in 2011.

Elsewhere in the industry, MessageLabs, the largest hosted security services company was acquired Wednesday by Symantec (NSDQ:SYMC) for $695 million in cash.

Symantec said that MessageLabs is the No. 1 provider of online messaging security worldwide with more than eight million end users at more than 19,000 clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 500. Symantec plans to cross-sell and up-sell its existing SaaS offerings of backup, storage and online remote access into the MessageLabs customer base.