Google has launched a hosted security service for enterprise customers in Australia, a re-branded version of the Postini service it acquired last year.
The hosted service, now called "Google Web Security for Enterprise", protects corporate Web and e-mail users from viruses, spyware, malicious Web sites, and offers hosted e-mail archiving services.
The service offers a choice of cheap security features. The option of Google Message Filtering (e-mail filtering) is billed at AU$3.65 per user per year, while Google Message Security (scanning of inbound and outbound e-mail plus messaging controls) is charged at AU$14.63 per user per year.
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The archiving of e-mails is somewhat more expensive — AU$30.47 per mailbox per year and AU$12.20 per mailbox per year thereafter. The service will be sold via Google channel partners, said Jason Senn, business development lead for Google Enterprise Asia Pacific.
"We're selling the solution through integrators, basically through distribution," Senn told ZDNet.com.au. "We've stripped a lot of the bloat out of the service to keep price cost-effective," he added.
"[The local Google security team] is smaller than you think. We have a handful of dedicated personnel and a much more regionally supported tier two that works with our ads group and online sales."
The new Google offering is a direct competitor to messaging security pioneers MessageLabs, and recent market entrant SurfControl — which launched an on-demand Web security service in July 2007 after acquiring Black Spider Technologies.
Google's key differentiator is its pricing model.
According to MessageLab's Australian product marketing manager, Philip Routley, MessageLabs sells anti-spam and antivirus for under AU$5 per user per year. He declined to divulge more specific pricing.
Archiving, which he says is more expensive than security, is charged by MessageLabs on the basis of storage space required — 25GB, 50GB, 250GB and 1,000GB blocks — as well as functionality, rather than on a per year basis.
