IT Skeptical About Google Hosted Apps

Google this week launched its most direct attack yet on Microsoft's Office franchise, launching a new version of Google's hosted e-mail and office-like services with a handful of bells and whistles targeted at enterprise deployment--all for $50 per user.

Google Apps Premier Edition includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk instant messaging and voice-over-IP, Google Doc & Spreadsheets and Google Start Page functionality for creating a customizable home page. The offering also includes Gmail support for mobile e-mail on BlackBerry handheld devices.

All of the services can be offered on an enterprise's own domain. Meanwhile, Google provides application-level control, enabling IT administrators to adapt services to business policies, such as sharing of calendars or documents outside of the company.

Google Apps services were originally offered in free and small business editions, but the new offering is pitched directly at the enterprise. To that end, Google has upped e-mail storage to 10 GBs per user, turned off contextual ads, added 24/7 user support and 99.9% SLA guarantees, as well as APIs for integration with enterprise apps including user provisioning, single sign-on and e-mail gateways.

The service clearly aims to take on Microsoft's Office suite with a lower-priced, software as service alternative. The price for a standalone version of the Professional Edition of Office is $499.But Microsoft is also in the SaaS business with its Office Live initiative (a Web hosting service) and a hosted CRM offering. Office Online offers Office online resources.