Postini offers a number of on-demand communications security and compliance solutions and serves more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. Postini’s services include message security, archiving, encryption, and policy enforcement tools which can be used to protect a company’s email, instant messaging, and other web-based communications platforms. Notably Google was already utilizing Postini technology with Gmail; the acquisition would appear to be a case of Google wanting to own a technology it was already using under license.

The acquisition of Postini comes as a surprise following rumors in June that the company was working towards an IPO.

Dave Girouard, Vice President & General Manager, Google Enterprise wrote on the Google Blog of the need for Google to deliver products that support complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues.

We realized that we needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community. That’s why we’re excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Postini, a company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM, and other web-based communications. Like Google Apps, Postini’s services are entirely hosted, eliminating the need to install any hardware or software. A leader in its field, Postini serves more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users, and was one of our first partners for Google Apps. Their email and IM management services include inbound and outbound policy management, spam and virus protection, content filtering, message archiving, encryption, and more. We will continue to support Postini’s customers and we look forward to the possibilities ahead.

The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of the third quarter 2007.

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They recently hired a new CFO, Murray Demo, who can handle the IPO process. He was with Adobe for ten years and served as CFO for the last six. According to our source, the company held what is called a “bake off,” which is a selection process for the investment bankers who will market and sell the company’s stock in the IPO, and selected Merrill Lynch as the lead underwriter. Merrill Lynch just happens to be one of Postini’s early customes, so loyalty may have played a part.

Postini’s revenues are rumored to be at around a $75 million run rate, and is “very” profitable.

This is the year that IPOs may make a big comeback. We are tracking a few companies that made it through the downturn, sometimes by resorting to drastic measures to keep the company going, and who are now planning to hit the public markets. Postini will likely not have the $1 billion valuation that Netsuite is looking for, but it is a healthy and profitable company nonetheless.

See the Postini profile here.

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