Introducing Google Message Continuity, powered by Postini
When we acquired Postini in 2007, we incorporated additional cloud-based spam and virus filtering, email archiving and encryption services into our Enterprise products. We had a vision that the power of the cloud could deliver …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the payoff of a slow integration arc: Google bought Postini in mid-2007 (announced the same week as its other enterprise moves), folded the company's cloud-based spam and virus filtering, archiving and encryption into its Enterprise line, and spent late 2007 positioning it for business buyers (prepping Postini for the business world). Message Continuity is the next step up the stack — instead of just cleaning mail, Postini's cloud now keeps a running copy of a company's mail available through Gmail if the primary mail system goes down.
The pickup tells you where this lands competitively: the only notable syndication came from All about Microsoft, which framed the launch as welcoming "the newest Exchange Server backup provider." That is precisely the wedge — a Google service sold into shops whose servers are still Microsoft's, no Gmail migration required.
First-order effects
- Administrators already buying Postini message security gain a failover mailbox in Gmail without adding a second vendor — Google moves from hygiene supplier to part of their disaster-recovery plan while Exchange stays in place.
- For Microsoft, the threat shifts from losing the mailbox decision to being bypassed on availability: a customer can keep Exchange and still route around its outages via Google.
Second-order effects
- The pressure lands on Microsoft to answer inside its own installed base — continuity and high-availability become the comparison point for Exchange, not Gmail-vs-Outlook feature lists.
- Rival archiving and security vendors that sold continuity alongside filtering face a bundled alternative priced into a relationship they don't control.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cloud providers enter enterprises sideways — security first, then archiving, then continuity — making ancillary services the bridge over which on-premises estates eventually migrate, a reversal of the traditional lift-and-shift sales motion.
- Continuity-as-a-service also raises the bar regulators and insurers apply to mail outages, since a cheap fallback exists whether or not a firm buys one.
The trend: Cloud vendors are using ancillary services bolted onto legacy infrastructure — filtering, archiving, now continuity — as the entry wedge ahead of any full migration.