Photo by 3 Blind Mice

I was recently introduced to Cemaphore Systems, who do some very interesting work backing up Exchange stores. Their main product is an enterprise system that replicates MAPI/RPC transactions to a backup server. This replication means that if your main system fails, its simple to switch users over to the mirrored copy, without having to mess around with file-level backups. It's a smart idea, well executed.

Looking through their blog, I discovered they've just introduced a personal version, MailShadow for Google Apps, that backs up all your Outlook mails and contacts to Gmail. Once you've installed their plugin, everything gets copied over to the Google account, and even better, any Gmail messages also appear back in Outlook. This is a really useful tool for anyone who needs the rich functionality and integration of the Outlook and Exchange world, but would like the easy access, searching and reliability advantages of a modern cloud-based service. It's not often that you get to have your cake and eat it too.