Google Working to Add 'every Damn' Service to Apps

Google is going to make sure users of its Apps productivity and collaboration software can tap all of the company's services, according to Dave Girouard, president of the company's enterprise group, in a colorful tweet on Twitter.

By Chris Kanaracus and Juan Carlos Perez
Thu, April 09, 2009

IDG News Service — Google is going to make sure users of its Apps productivity and collaboration software can tap all of the company's services, according to Dave Girouard, president of the company's enterprise group, in a colorful tweet on Twitter.

"We're working to give you access to every damn Google service with a Google Apps account -- yep every damn one of them. Um, maybe not Lively," he wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday, referring at the end to Lively, the 3-D virtual world service Google shuttered recently.

In an e-mailed statement, Girouard said he has been "exploring Twitter as a different way to engage with our users and partners," but did not directly address the Tuesday post.

Asked if Girouard's tweet should be taken seriously, a Google spokesman said via e-mail that he "would not call it a joke."

Google has a range of services that could be natural extensions for current customers of its enterprise Apps service, particularly social-networking tools such as Blogger and Orkut. In addition, Google's FeedBurner application could be adopted for enterprise RSS (real simple syndication), and its Groups forum-building platform would also seem to make sense.

But Girouard's decision to tweet about Google's plans is probably not the right method of reaching the average corporate IT buyer, according to one observer.

"I don't know of many other software executives that are providing information about future product direction on Twitter," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research. "If it's a message to the enterprise decision-maker, he's missed his mark."

Such individuals are looking for a "broad, thoughtful and articulate strategy about how great technology gets better and is delivered in a manageable way to the enterprise," she added. That includes tools and guidance for system administrators, as well as training "for those users who may not have grown up in the Google environment."

While there are lots of potentially interesting integrations between Google's products, if they are not rolled out as part of a formal business framework then they could just be a distraction, she added.

Beyond social-networking tools, Girouard could also be referring to services such as Google Checkout, which could be "great for a small business looking to do a little e-commerce," said Burton Group analyst Guy Creese via e-mail. Other services with relevance for business are Website Optimizer, Translate and Notebook, he added.

But Creese echoed Wettemann in saying that Google can't simply add more bells and whistles to Apps if it wants to court large companies.

"While this strategy creates a certain 'shock and awe' factor in the developer and geek world, this still leaves certain large enterprise requirements unanswered, such as role-based administration and records management capabilities," he said. "I think this strategy strengthens Google Apps within its core constituency -- the SMB market. SMBs will love the increasingly Swiss Army knife capabilities of Google Apps.

"However, this strategy doesn't get Google closer to sweeping the enterprise market, which is looking for certain base capabilities. And with [Microsoft] Office 14 now in alpha testing, I think Google's disruption window is starting to close," Creese added.

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.
With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security.  The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough.  Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs. 
This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.
The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.
This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.
This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.
A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.
Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center