Google’s Enterprise 3.0 Strategy

Google acquires Postini for $625 Million. This is an excellent acquisition, as Google was already using Postini’s spam filtering technology for Gmail earlier. This acquisition also marks Google’s next move into the Enterprise 3.0 space. Postini is a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions serving more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide.

Postini is backed by August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital, Pacifica Fund, Summit Partners and Sun Microsystems. I wrote about them earlier in Postini Gets High Marks. Note, they have a strong SME customer base, which is perfectly aligned with Google’s target audience for their Office attack.

Next step for Google? A CRM player. RightNow may be a possibility, unless Marc Benioff wants to retire!

Another good one would be Qualys, an On-Demand Managed Security player.