Google announced today that Google Apps Vault is now available online to new customers. The product was launched earlier this year as a new governance solution for Google Apps for businesses of all sizes, but certainly for businesses at the enterprise level.

Google says it can reduce costs of litigation, regulatory investigation and compliance.

“Until now, many small and medium-size businesses were unable to deploy solutions like Vault due to cost and complexity,” explains Google. “But starting today, Apps customers can purchase Google Apps Vault online directly from the Control Panel.”

“Businesses of all sizes need to be prepared for the unexpected,” said Google’s Jack Halprin upon the product’s launch. “In today’s environment, using Vault to manage, archive and preserve your data can help protect your business. Litigation costs can really take a toll on a business when minor lawsuits can run up to many thousands of dollars, and larger lawsuits can cost even more. Significant litigation costs come from having to search and find relevant data, which is also known as electronic discovery (eDiscovery).”

“E-discovery can be part of virtually any litigation and requires you to search, find and preserve your electronic information such as email,” he addd. “Vault helps protect your business with easy-to-use search so you can quickly find and preserve data to respond to unexpected customer claims, lawsuits or investigations. With an instant-on functionality and availability of your data a few clicks away, Vault provides access to all of your Gmail and on-the-record chats and can provide significant savings to your business over the traditional costs of litigation and eDiscovery.”

Here’s Google’s intro video about it:

Google Apps Vault can be added to users’ Google Apps accounts for an additional $5 per user per month. Not too much of an added cost for this kind of resource planning.