Google Apps Marketplace Launches as New Cloud Computing Store (
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Google March 9 opened its Google Apps Marketplace, an online store
selling enterprises business applications that integrate with and extend Google
Apps.
The Google Apps Marketplace will let Google Apps users access business apps
for project management, billing and accounting, travel management, and other
services. This will provide third-party software developers a larger cloud
computing channel into which to sell their applications.
The move, announced during a Campfire One event at the company's Mountain
View, Calif., headquarters, is
Google's most aggressive play to drive growth for Google Apps, a suite of SAAS
(software as a service) collaboration applications. The play also threatens
existing cloud application stores such as Salesforce.com's AppExchange.
Google Apps, which Google offers in free and paid versions, includes Gmail; Google Docs word
processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications; and Google Sites
publishing software.
Google Apps has picked up more than 2 million businesses and 25 million users who opt to
let Google host their business data so they don't have to maintain on-premises
solutions such as Microsoft SharePoint or IBM
Lotus Notes on their own servers.
However, collaboration applications are only a part of the SAAS software
ecosystem. As the success of Salesforce.com shows, there is a burgeoning market
for enterprise applications based on the cloud.
To wit, the Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps administrators to
purchase integrated third-party cloud applications and deploy them to their
domains.
Google Engineering David Glazer, who shepherded Google's OpenSocial movement, said that while many businesses are
switching their collaboration and communication options to Google's cloud,
customers are looking to extend the cloud to enterprise applications.
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