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Google pitches Exchange backup with Postini

Latest attempt to tweak Microsoft's Exchange business involves an e-mail backup solution that uses Google's Postini service.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
Google's vision for Google Message Continuity, an Exchange backup service being pitched by the company. Google

Google continued to remind enterprise IT managers today that it wants to provide alternatives to Microsoft's e-mail products.

With the launch of Google Message Continuity, an e-mail backup service, Google wants to get a toehold in companies that run Microsoft Exchange servers for e-mail by offering themselves up as a backup solution should something go wrong with those servers. The idea is that in the event of an Exchange outage, workers could sign into Google accounts and get their regular work e-mail as usual through Google's interface.

The real idea, of course, is to convince more and more IT managers to think about using Google instead of Microsoft as they consider Web-based e-mail and office productivity tools. Google has been pushing this strategy for several years now, hoping to dent Microsoft's lucrative hold on enterprise software in much the same way that Microsoft is trying to derail Google's search dominance with Bing.

Google is pitching the service as a way to avoid the problems caused on downtime of on-premise e-mail software, skating over the fact that Web-based e-mail services aren't exactly 100 percent reliable either. Still, a combination of the two seems to make sense, as it's unlikely both would be down at the same time.

More information about the service can be found on Google's Postini Web page.