ITWire

Kevin Gough, product manager, Google Enterprise, told iTWire that prior to its official launch today businesses have already moved off their desktop systems to Google Apps, which includes wordprocessing, spreadsheet, calendaring, email and instant messaging capabilities. Gough also said that a number of large enterprises have also commenced deployment and pilots of the online system that is looming as a threat to Microsoft's desktop-based office productivity dominance.

"We have hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses that have already done that," said Gough. "They’ve already switched their entire infrastructure over to Google Apps. We have just released the Premier Edition of Google Apps today and today we already have GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. If on the first day of the launch we have two of the top 25 companies in the world. Imagine what’s going to happen in a month or a year from now."

According to Gough, expensive desktop-based office productivity tools are now being viewed as unnecessary non-core infrastructure for enterprises.

"There is a core versus context argument," says Gough. "CIOs are increasingly looking at what can they safely outsource to a trusted partner and what is a core function that is going to give them a competitive differentiator. They’re realizing that email and productivity tools and the staff that have to maintain that is not a competitive differentiator for them and they can redeploy that staff on things that are more core to their business. These large companies have proven that they’re confident with Google and that email and productivity is something that they’re comfortable outsourcing."

Gough believes that desktop office tools are anachronism from a different age when people worked in a different environment to the present.