Google Apps Makers Believe Time (and IT Value) Is on Their Side

Google officials acknowledge this challenge of convincing corporate IT departments that they can be a business software provider. But leaders at Google Enterprise and Google Apps believe they will win the good graces of large business over time for the same reasons other SaaS (software as a service) vendors, such as Salesforce.com, did years ago.

According to Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise, software delivered over the Web (or "the cloud") like Google Apps allows IT departments to realize substantial cost savings by having fewer servers to maintain and seamless upgrades to the applications which don't require IT or end-users to ever hit a button.

"IT resources are scarce at any company, and with the people you have, they shouldn't be managing e-mail servers," Girouard says. "Those people ought to be working on things that are special and proprietary, things that help you win over competitors."

In addition, Gmail's popularity among consumers could cause users to rise up and call for its adoption in large organizations, what the authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research call a "Groundswell".

Rebecca Wettemann, vice president with the consultancy Nucleus Research, sees the potential uprising, too. "Users begin to ask, 'Why is this easier at home than at work?' " says Wettemann. "Many software firms are trying to leverage what's going on in the consumer space and bring it to users at businesses. Google is very well-positioned to do that."

Google Apps to Microsoft Office: We Come as a Friend, Not a Foe

The spread of Gmail and Google's overall popularity as the web's top search engine made the launch of Google Apps an interesting alternative for businesses to consider: what if you could pay little or nothing for online software and get document and spreadsheet capabilities similar to what you used to pay Microsoft many dollars for with Office?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and chairman Bill Gates have downplayed Google Apps' importance, dismissing it as not being a true competitor. Both have noted that Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel offer more features than Google Apps.

Girouard and other Google Apps leaders have two responses to such statements: First, in the context of large enterprises, Google views its productivity software as a supplement, not a replacement, to Microsoft Office. Only in the case of Gmail and calendaring, he concedes, does Google Apps present enterprises and their users with a choice.