Posted by Jerry Hong, Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Since we launched Google Apps Vault, many businesses have adopted it to archive, retain and manage business critical information. Until now, Vault was available only to new and recent Google Apps customers. Starting today, Vault is available to existing Apps customers that purchased Google Apps online, directly from Google. Vault is also now available to Google Apps for Education customers.

Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from lawsuits by enabling organizations to find and preserve email messages that may be relevant to a particular lawsuit. That saves time, effort, and costs associated with responding to litigation or other investigations. Google Apps Vault can also help if an employee leaves abruptly and the organization needs to understand the status of the employee’s projects, Vault will help find the needed information. For educational institutions, Google Apps Vault can help in responding to open records requests.

Vault can be added to an existing Apps account for $5/user/month. If you purchased Google Apps online, directly from us, you can purchase Vault from your Apps Control Panel. If you are a Google Apps for Education customer interested in Vault you can contact us for more information.

For customers that purchased Google Apps from a reseller, prior to August 1st, 2012, we are working to enable Vault for online purchase through resellers and we’ll announce that when it’s ready.