GMail becomes enterprise friendly

A recent article at eWeek looks at how GMail has taken a turn to become an enterprise tool. Some relatively new items that are featured in GMail are:

-Google calendar
-Docs gadgets
-Alerts from calendars
-G Chat available on cell phones

Read the article here.

Google Chrome: Enterprise Browser?

There’s been a buzz recently about Google Chrome, the web-browser Google is launching. Larry Dignan poses the question ‘should businesses pay attention to this move’ in this latest post on ZDNet.

It is still unsure how Google Chrome will fit in the enterprise since it is in its early beta stages. Companies will have to keep a close watch in this web browser though, as with all other Google Apps it winds up sneaking into your enterprise somehow. We all readily await the features and perks that Google’s new browser will bring to the table. I’ll be keeping a close watch on its arrival, analyzing whether the browser makes business sense.

Sharing PDFs on Google Docs: It’s Finally Here

Going through my reader this morning, the title of Oscar Berg’s latest post “Now you can upload and share PDFs with Google Docs” on The Content Economy caught my eye. One of the features that we have long been awaiting on Google Docs was the ability to view, upload, and share PDFs on Google Docs, and now according to this post on The Official Google Docs Blog, it’s finally here

Even though text from PDFs can easily be copied on Google Docs, the option to edit the PDF text is not yet available. The Google Blog has already mentioned that this is something that is in the works for the future (another thing we can look forward to from Google). This is definitely a valuable feature that will be appreciated in the enterprise.

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.