Google launches corporate software assault

Stan Beer
Monday, 28 August 2006 08:54

Your IT - Home IT

Google has signalled its intention to expand beyond its consumer boundaries and into the corporate marketplace with the announcement of a range of new web-based business oriented appplications designed to go head to head with Microsoft offerings.

Leading the charge will be a new corporate strength version of Google's web-based email system Gmail called Corporate Gmail, which will enable businesses to use their own domains.

One of the objections to using Gmail in a corporate environment is that the system carries advertising. However, Google plans to offer an ad free subscription based service as an alternative for businesses.

In addition to Gmail, Google has been steadily building a stable of web-based office productivity services for intially aimed at small businesses. The first bunch, going under the umbrella "Google Apps for your Domain" includes internet messaging and telephony application Google Talk; online organizer Google Calendar; and Control Panel which enables users to manage user accounts, aliases, mailing lists, and chat settings.

Online wordprocessor Writely and spreadsheet Google Spreadsheet are expected to be added to the mix of applications as they come out of beta.

While the initial set of web service applications from Google will be targeted at small businesses, industrial versions have been promised for release later this year.

Writely, which was released to open beta two weeks ago, is likely to be one of the products released for the corporate offering. While the wordprocessor is relatively lightweight compared to desktop-based Microsoft Word, it contains the necessary features to meet the needs of most medium level office users and documents can be saved in a range of formats both online and on local disk.

Over the past couple of years, Google has been establishing massive global datacenters with the aim of etablishing of software as a service and data management businesses for both the consumer and corporate markets.

Microsoft appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place in the software as a service market. While the software leader has established its Windows Live platform to be a player in the software as a service market, it is also heavily dependent on its desktop software which provides the majority of its revenue.