Reading the Tea leaves in Googles acquisition of Postini

I am out here in Boulder this week for the StillSecure sales kick-off meetings so blogging will be slow this week.  I wanted to comment yesterday on the Google-Postini deal but just didn't get time.  However, we did record a great podcast with Steve Hanna of TCG/TNC and Amith Krishnan of Microsoft/NAP and you can look for it soon.

First a little history, I have known about Postini for well over 7 years now.  Back when I was the VP of business development at Interliant, I used to hold monthly or bi-monthly business development days, where I would invite companies that wanted to partner with us in to present to a select group of executives at Interliant.  One day the founders of Postini came in and I was struck by the passion they had for their vision, the company and product.  We had investors in common and I tried very hard to make a partnership work there.  Since that time I have watched their progress very closely and they certainly made great strides!  Congratulations to Scott and the other folks there!

I do not think that Google's acquisition of Postini is a shot across the bow of Microsoft.  I think Google goes about its business of delivering on its vision.  I think its vision is rather simple really.  Google believes that the future belongs to Software as a Service (SaaS).  As part of their SaaS strategy, they need to secure their web based apps, as well as offer security as a service.  This is not really much different than Microsofts "Live" program, also a Software as a Service play.  That is where the competition is.

Ultimately both of these large companies believe that the future belongs to software being hosted and delivered over the web.  Actually not that different than Interliant was trying to do 10 years ago with hosted Lotus Notes, Peoplesoft, Oracle, etc.  Back then we called it Application Service Provider.  Along with companies like Salesforce.com, this model of SaaS is changing the way we are going to use computers and applications in the future.