IBM is hoping to garner a share the corporate-mail market by introducing an inexpensive web-based corporate email service to compete with Google Inc's Google Apps and Microsoft.

The new web-based system, to be unveiled today will let users pick their domain name and will cost $3 per month, a price aimed directly at undercutting Google's $50 per year and the $10 to $12 per month that Microsoft charges for its webmail services. IBM also says it will offer 1 gigabyte of storage, twice the amount of Microsoft. It also hopes to move into the new territory as Google is encountering technical problems--some recent outages that have left business users in the dark for hours.

IBM hopes that its reputation for reliability and security will be a selling point. "We run the world's most mission critical systems for banks, telcos and utilities," Sean Poulley, IBM's vice president of online collaboration services, tells Forbes.com. "It's fair to say we're pretty trusted."

Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division, defends Gmail, telling Forbes.com that his company still offers 99.9 percent reliability. And as far as competition with Google, he points out that IBM's 1 gigabyte of storage space is far inferior to the 25 gigs that Google offers.

For more on the email wars:
- see this Forbes.com article

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