Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

October 03, 2007

Google Beefs Up Apps Security

By Tim Gray


Google (News - Alert) is locking down its Google Apps Premier addition with new e-mail security, compliance and recovery services, increasing protection on hosted communications services designed to be used primarily by large organizations.

The new services, designed by recent Google acquisition security from Postini, include e-mail controls for Apps Premier administrators like configurable spam and virus filtering; setting and management of usage policies; and recovery of deleted messages.

The service is now available only in the English-language version of Apps Premier. Next, an the international version will be launched in in 27 languages, according to Google.

"With Postini, we saw the potential to deliver a more complete hosted solution for businesses of all sizes," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google Enterprise. "We are quickly adding Postini's market-leading security and compliance capabilities to Google Apps Premier Edition to give businesses more control over the administration and security of these applications."

The new security, compliance, policy management and message recovery services added to Google Apps Premier Edition give customers the ability to centrally set and manage usage policies lets administrators add footers to every message and block messages with specific keywords or attachments.

Apps can now also create policies that apply to user groups or individuals, and monitor all e-mail communications for compliance auditing purposes. Regarding restoration of messages, administrators can recover e-mails in the last 90 days.

The search giant announced the upgrades as heated competition in the on-premise communication and collaboration suites space continues to emanate from several corners including  IBM’s (News - Alert) (News - Alert) Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Office and Exchange, which have a longer history and have been preferred by some because they are considered to be more powerful.

Now,  Google is significantly increasing the strength of Apps while not increasing prices, by adding Postini’s core services.

The move clearly signals the begning of the latest phase to get Apps beyond just small and medium size companies, and into the enterprise level.

In fact, says Google, Apps Premier's Web hosted architecture, which software is housed in its data centers, saves customers from having to install and maintain it, different from rival products. Google also points out that Apps Premier's allows users to share documents and collaboratively edit them.

Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, and the Start Page, has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of users already, according to Google.

As a bonus to Postini's customers, Google said ti will also now offering a free extended trial of Google Apps Premier Edition to all new and existing Postini customers.

Tim Gray is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To see more of his articles, please visit Tim Gray’s columnist page.



Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Socialize with us

FREE Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter

Click here to receive your targeted Contact Center Solutions Community eNewsletter.[Subscribe Now]

Industry News

Featured Resources

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Press Releases

About the Contact Center Solutions Community

    Welcome to the Contact Center Solutions Community The Contact Center Solutions Global Online Community, Sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, is designed to serve as the industry's premier resource for information and research on Contact Center Solutions technology and deployment strategies.