Google has been evolving from a search engine to a set of services based in the internet under the model of Software as a Servise (SaaS) aimed to leverage the productivity and collaboration of people with common objetives or interests. It's based in the so called Web 2.0 and includes among others services: gmail (email), calendar, docs (documents, spreadsheets and they have announced presentations soon), webpages, blogs and videos. This set of services is offered by free or if you need more storage space or more support service, you can opt for the premium kit.

Whilst the functionality falls short of that offered by Microsoft in its Office suite - it is likely that Google will quickly catch up - and offer a very attractive alternative to running Office 2007 with Sharepoint 2007 as a collaboration environment. It will be both simpler to deploy and to manage and follows the increasing trend we are seeing to the outsourcing of expensive and complex to manage services.

contributed by Max Ugaz on Jul 14 5:09pm

I think this is such an important example of the way the current Microsoft Office model is being challenged that we should include it. Who wants to have to support their own SharePoint environment and full Office suite in order to manage some straightforward collaboration? It is true that Google Apps is far from yet being as rich as Office - but I suggest it won't be long before it gets there. Vista and Office 2007/SharePoint 2007 are such complex pieces of software that learning to use them effectively just gets in the way of productive collaboration. CAP Gemini in Europe has just announced it will provide support for Google Apps for its clients as an alternative to MS Office where on-line collaboration is a critcal requirement. They believe that organisations are receptive to this at a time when they are concerned about the cost of upgrading their infrastructure to run Vista.

contributed by Peter Haine on Sep 10 1:13am