Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Google is now hawking a “Custom Search Business Edition” at the rock-bottom starting price of $100, a fraction of its signature enterprise level Google Search Appliance.

Google Enterprise general manager Dave Girouard introduces the small business offering as Google’s latest initiative to “make search technology more accessible to businesses of all sizes.” Last week, Girouard announced the Google acqusition of Postini as an initiative to “better support the enterprise community.”

The (soon to be Google) Postini tag line is “Always on guard.” Postini competitor Commtouch hails “Real security. In real time.”

Are the two competing anti-spam communications vendors waging the same safe enterprise email battle, in the same way? NO

I spoke with Commtouch CEO Gideon Mantel to discuss enterprise implications of the Google buyout of Postini. Mantel told me that the Commtouch and Postini anti-spam solutions differ in both philosophy and execution.

Google touts its Postini acquisition as its Google Apps ticket to enterprise business, its shot at being taken seriously by serious businesses in its determined effort to unseat Microsoft enterprise seats. The Postiini modus operandi, however, is actually antithetical to the email security requirements of many of the world’s corporate processors of highly sensitive email communications, such as financial services providers.

In Google Buys Postini PLUS 500 million Email Secrets I analyze how Google, via Postini, will have direct access to proprietary enterprise communications, information and data for tracking, housing and archiving in Google’s “massively scalable” data centers strategically located throughout the world. What’s more: What goes in Google server farms, stays in Google server farms FOREVER.

Postini on how it wants to be enterprise email “gatekeeper”:

All email processing services are carried out automatically by software processes, not by human beings. Postini employees and partners never examine the contents of customer email passing through our system, except as required by law or as permitted by the customer.

Postini protects centralized databases and storage systems by preventing access from the public Internet. Postini web and mail pre-processing servers act as gatekeepers to data, limiting access only to account owners. All user information, not just highly sensitive information, is restricted to our operation centers.

Postiini may believe it needs to be enterprise data “gatekeeper” to ensure email security, but the world’s enterprises that insist on world-class data security will NOT allow any third-party vendor to “gatekeep” their private, proprietary, confidential email communications, even if that vendor is a Googley one, claiming privacy goodness with an incredulous no worry, “only” Google-Postini machines can read YOUR private email stance.

Mantel told me that Commtouch does NOT seek to “gatekeep” the data of its clients. In fact, Commtouch’s hands-off the proprietary emails of others is a core value proposition of the company, and a competitive advantage against Google Postini.

Comtouch on how “individual and enterprise privacy is strictly maintained”:

Throughout the spam classification process, the Commtouch solution does not analyze or send the contents of the message to the remote Detection Center (neither the body of the messsages, nor an attachments). Detection and classification is based on select message characteristics only, rather than on a lexical analysis of the contents of the message.

Commtouch is in touch with the serious privacy concerns of enterprise customers. CEO Mantel expressed to me how the Commtouch product strategy repsects the integrity of proprietary corporate emails.

Why is Google choosing Postini to drive its anti-spam enterprise email strategy?

Postini shares the Google not so enterprise friendly philosophy that corporate emails can only be secure if securely archived in “massively scalable” server farms around the world, Google data centers that is.

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