Iomega Beefs Up Services With Google's Postini

storage instant messaging e-mail

The new services are just the latest in Iomega's gradual move to become a managed services provider through the channel, a move that started when Iomega acquired CSCI, a managed services provider catering to small and midsize businesses, for about $11.5 million in July of 2006.

Last Fall, Iomega added VeriSign SSL services to its practice.

About a year ago, Iomega cut its first deal with Postini, adding that vendor's e-mail security and compliance services to its solution provider line card.

In the agreement unveiled Tuesday morning, Iomega will offer Postini's e-mail encryption, instant message security, and e-mail and instant message archiving services to its small business solution providers as part of its OfficeScreen offering, said Jonathan Huberman, Iomega CEO.

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In July, Postini was acquired by Internet giant Google, which raise questions about Postini's ability to continue working with the channel.

Huberman said that the Google acquisition has had absolutely no impact on his company's relationship with Postini.

"Google assured me that it's business as usual for Postini," he said. "I anticipate that for the foreseeable future there'll be no change. Actually, we're more engaged with them now than before the acquisition, because we're more successful. I can't say how much [we have sold of Postini's services]. But we're meeting or exceeding expectations."

Scott Beukeman, partner and network technician at Tech Solutions, a Mitchell, SD-based hardware and software sales and support solution provider, said that Iomega's relationship with Postini has made it possible for smaller channel players to engage customers with managed services.

"It's nice because it has made it easier for small companies to work with our customers," Beukeman said. "Iomega has made Postini services available to small businesses. Otherwise, we'd need to have maybe over 200 customers to work directly with Postini."

Tech Solutions just started working with Iomega's OfficeScreen managed services about a month ago in response to a mailer from Iomega promoting the services to its channel partners, Beukeman said.

However, he said it will take some time before his customers, which are nearly all small businesses or SOHOs with under 20 employees, are ready for services like instant message archiving and security. "But they're big on services for filtering for viruses and for junk mail filtering," he said.

The Postini managed Exchange service offerings work because each Microsoft Exchange server has an MX record for the mailboxes, Huberman said. Postini posts the MX record of customers' mailboxes to a Postini server so that e-mails are routed there, cleaned, and then sent back to customers.

"Postini e-mail servers serve over 2 million e-mails per day," Huberman said. "For SMBs, they get the same e-mail protection as the Fortune-100 companies. And once the Postini service sees spam from one customer, it blocks that spam for all its customers."

Postini also has 40 data centers worldwide to make sure there are no disruptions in operations, Huberman said.

Iomega's managed services are available to solution providers through Tech Data, Insight, and CDW, Huberman said.