Google Data

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Marketing

We're happy to announce that Google Message Discovery is now available for purchase online. Google Message Discovery is a package of online services that gives businesses more control over the storage and security of their email. Now any business, small or large, can easily implement strong email security as well as reliable archiving.

The cornerstone of Google Message Discovery is email archiving. What is email archiving? Many businesses already have some email backup because they recognize it's critical to:

• recover lost mail
• comply with regulations regarding email retention
  
• access emails in response to a litigation or other investigation
  

The problem is, the backup systems many businesses use, such as tape drives or extra email servers, aren't sufficient. It's costly and complex to store huge amounts of data on email servers. And it's nearly impossible to find specific emails quickly when searching through a pile of backup tapes.

Email archiving is different. Unlike a backup, an archiving service:

• provides storage that automatically scales with your needs
  
• captures all sent and received messages (Backup systems merely take a snapshot of your mail storage at a certain time, say every night at midnight, and don't capture messages that may have been sent and then deleted in the meantime)
  
• allows specific policies to be set around message retention time periods
  
• allows authorized administrators to search across email for all users quickly
  

The message archiving service in Google Message Discovery is designed to help businesses of all sizes easily achieve these goals. It's included with Google Apps Premier Edition, and also supports other email systems, such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino.

Since the service is hosted by Google, there's no hardware or software to install. And it provides powerful search tools to help you quickly locate relevant emails when you need them. Message Discovery also includes email filtering and security, which blocks spam, viruses and other threats before they reach your servers or inbox.

We see email archiving and security as a foundational element for helping businesses organize their information and make it accessible and useful. And now that we've made it available online- starting at $25 per user, per year- we look forward to helping organizations quickly take greater control over their email.