Though it started with selling software to universities and small businesses, Google has pervaded many more large businesses during the past year with Google Apps, the company's suite of messaging and productivity software. Analysts say that Google Enterprise, which is the division of Google that runs Apps, has added many features to the product that make it more attractive to enterprise IT departments.

JohnsonDiversey, a company that sells commercial cleaning products, is Google's most recent win. It moved its 12,000 employees over to the premier edition of Google Apps, which includes Gmail, instant messaging, documents and spreadsheets (among other things) for $50 (about Rs 2,500) per user per year.

"E-mail is critical to our work, but we're trying to simplify IT," says Brent Hoag, JohnsonDiversey's IT director. "We want fewer infrastructures to maintain, and Google (Gmail) allows us to do that." Because Google hosts Google Apps in its own datacenters, companies that buy the product do not need to maintain servers in-house (a process which is widely known as cloud computing or software as a service). According to Hoag, JohnsonDiversey had been managing several application servers and two different mail systems prior to moving to Gmail.

Over the past year, Google Apps had matured substantially and added more enterprise features. Among them is providing IT groups with the ability to have greater control over the new features that are rolled out to their users. Productivity applications, such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, have also seen gradual improvements. Google has baked in more advanced features, such as macros for spreadsheets. Google Apps also work better with BlackBerry e-mail, as a connector has been created to BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Perhaps most significantly, at a Google Apps CIO roundtable event, Google announced that enterprise users of Google Apps could access Gmail through an Outlook client. The company hopes it will quell the protests by users who have become tethered to the desktop app and who, as a result, have sometimes hindered enterprise adoption of Google Apps.

"For me, it eliminates the last hurdle or the mindset of letting go of (Microsoft) Exchange," said Bob Rudy, vice president and CIO of Avago, a semiconductor company that moved its employees over to Google Apps. "This will definitely help with adoption."

Google's addition of the ability to access Gmail via Outlook surprised many analysts. A year ago, such a move would have been unheard of since Google has been offering an enterprise environment that was in stark contrast to that of Microsoft's. But according to Google executives and analysts, the decision was arrived at after analyzing the needs of both current and prospective customers.

"Google listened to what enterprises wanted, and they delivered much of that," says Matt Cain, a Gartner analyst. "They have developed true proof-points, where companies are saying that they have been successful. Now we're seeing more enterprise interest in Google, rather than just curiosity."

Other enterprise adopters of Google Apps who were at the event included Genentech and the Morgans Hotel Group. During a presentation on the state of the Google Apps product , Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, said that the company has "dozens" of companies with more than 1,000 employees using Apps. He also said that they generated "hundreds of millions" in terms of revenue for Google.

Related Articles

• Buzz Opens Privacy Pandora's Box for Google
• The Attack on Google: What it Means
• Google Attack Highlights Strength of Targeted Malware
• Hole In Your Cloud
• You Need a Response to the Utility Analogy

Latest Articles

• The Quiet Threat: Cyber Spies are Already in your Systems
• Responding to Security Questions Successfully
• Security Secrets the Bad Guys Don't Want You to Know
• Don't Wait for Adobe Sandboxing to Secure PDF Viewing
• The 4 Tiers of a Secure B2B Framework