Google Apps Premium to be sold by technology providers

Recently announced, and detailed at eWeek, Google will allow technology providers to sell their Google Apps Premium edition starting in March. They hope to gain more enterprise application users by doing this. Resellers must pay Google $40 for every user they serve, but other than that, the marketing, promotion, and price of application is in the hands of the reseller. Google is also only allowing 50 users per business to use its standard edition of Google Apps.

Google's Native Client

Google's Native Client (a new open-source technology designed to complement JavaScript, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe AIR and Flash) is geared to address the security issues inherent in leveraging native computer code in application development, helping Google bridge the performance gap between Web and desktop applications.

We see that the future will be about computers that are "clients" - pretty basic computers with small or non-existant local storage, plugging into web apps--

Netbooks are seen as a first step to that... everyone will be using apps online, etc. etc.

Now that Google has Google docs and shareware, this is the next step--but will it work?

Check out eWeek's coverage here.

Microsoft Applications Vs. Google Apps in the Enterprise

A while back, we received a lot of buzz on this post “Microsoft Keeps on Innovating” on our front end of innovation blog. Today I came across this podcast on eWeek in which George Langan, eXpresso CEO, explains why delivering Microsoft productivity applications as a service makes a whole lot more sense in the enterprise when compared to Google applications. The podcast is 15 minutes long. What’s your take on the on-going battle in the enterprise between Microsoft and Google?

YouTube Exclusively for Business

Amid breaking news on Google Chrome, as we discussed here, you may have missed that the undoubtedly innovative company also launched Google Video for business. This new application allows businesses to have a YouTube like app, exclusively for their use with additional capabilities to limit access. As this article summarizes:

“Google Video for businesses is a new enterprise application that enables messaging and collaboration among employees who require more discretion in sharing video content. Google Video for businesses leverages the cloud computing infrastructure Google employs for YouTube, one of the company's core Web services.”

Also as Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, stated:

"Think of it as private-label YouTube for your domain, with security in place so you can control who has access to what video"

With the tremendous influx in messaging, and video as well as file sharing, this new app from Google will help enterprises to feel more secure while still participating in this trend. What are your thoughts on this new application? Are there benefits to be found in this for your organization?

Is Google Apps Enterprise Ready?

I came across this post on eWeek this morning which gathers insights from different analysts on the idea that is floating around with the recent infrastructure outages from Google Gmail and Google Apps. Does this mean that Google’s software is not yet dependable for the enterprise?

Melissa Webster, an analyst at IDC, mentions that corporate networks, and email systems have outages all the time. Abner Germanow, another analyst at IDC said that in the beginning companies are not too attached to apps, but as time goes by the level of reliability on the application increases as well. The real question lies: Is the application reliable enough to run a business on it? Can your business afford any downtime in case of outages?

Dana Gardner, founding analyst of InterArbor Solutions claims that organizations go through email outages internally regularly, it is just that users from web based apps have higher expectations than those who pay higher for internalized communication systems.

How has the recent outages of Google Apps affected the enterprise and cloud computing realm?

Online Collaboration: Make Way for Microsoft

Google and Zoho watch out, Microsoft is taking aim at the same market these SAAS vendors have been eyeing. This article on eWeek highlights that Microsoft is launching several online services that will include collaboration tools and enterprise applications. Microsoft will release the following products as online subscription services: Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Microsoft still seems to be light-years away in terms of online collaboration. Companies like Salesforce.com and Netsuite have integrated many enterprise applications that were designed for the Web, whereas Microsoft is new to the game. Should companies fear the arrival of Microsoft in this space?

Google: Aiding in Enterprise Collaboration Once Again

Google recently launched Google Sites, which allowed companies to use this service on their own domains. Now, according to this post on The Official Google Blog, they’ve made it even easier for companies to build websites and share information throughout the enterprise.

Now on Google Sites, organizations can look forward to being able to collaborate on team projects, share information on company intranets, create community groups, forums, updates, and many more things. Companies no longer have to host the service on their domain, they can safely host their website at http://sites.google.com/[your-website]. The best part of all is that it is free!

It will be interesting to see how this will perform against other enterprise applications like Zoho People, which allow human resource departments to keep track of employees through an intranet.

Google’s Cloud: Is the Enterprise Truly Ready?

Google is often seen as a fierce competitor to IBM and Microsoft since it has seen a surge in numbers of adoption of Google Apps, but its enterprise cloud structure isn’t quite where it should be yet. Searching the blogosphere, I came across this article from eWeek, in which Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource, shares that he is rather unimpressed with Google’s cloud, commenting that just because something is hosted it doesn’t make it a truly shared infrastructure.

The difference here between Google and other software is that Google’s services are delivered through a web browser, whereas other companies offer traditional software and servers that must be installed by the client. Dave Rosenberg mentions:

"We're seeing a lot of people who are using our software or other software between external systems, but the idea that we're all moving to the cloud is still probably five years away."

Dave believes that there are certain reasons why the enterprise is slow to move into the “cloud”.

1. SAAS providers like Salesforce.com keep customers locked into their own technology, thus defeating the purpose of SOA.
2. The Google Apps engine is written in only one language, Python. If there was more language support, adoption from the enterprise would come much sooner.

Rosenberg’s solution is that one of the 3 big vendors IBM, Sun or Hewlett-Packard must build huge datacenters to kick-start the future of cloud infrastructure in the enterprise. Do you think that step will truly help mold the use of the “cloud” in the enterprise?

Google Conforms to Demand

According to a post at the official Google Docs blog, they have now modified Google Applications so that the Google Spreadsheets and Presentations are available offline. This is now available via Google Gears, which enables the documents to be viewed offline. The only downside to this is when if a document needs to be edited; it can only be done online. Google Docs was already available offline, and the difference is it that modification can be made on or off line.