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Google Opens Apps Marketplace

Posted by timothy on from the software-on-tap dept.

snydeq writes "Google has launched the Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications. The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites, and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap, and Zoho. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard, and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth."

2 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Too much lock-in. by Seor+Jojoba · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe if this was based on an open standard defining how to implement the same services on a non-Google platform, this would all be more palatable.

  2. Re:I hope this cloud bullshit ends soon. by mrboyd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not the solution for everyone but it sure is one for my 5 employees company. Google gives me an email/shared calendar/document sharing and website hosting for a ridiculously low price. We use an hosted CRM, billing and issue tracking software for a a near zero infrastructure cost and the recurring if far below what the local cisco distributor would charge us to even have 10 minute look at our setup. We wouldn't be able to afford self-hosting and maintaining a tenth of the applications we use if we had to do it in house. And most important for us at this point it works for roaming users; google app integrates well with blackberry without the need for a BES. etc.. etc..

    Last week i needed to do a quick survey of our customers about a specific point and it took me all of ten minutes to set up a form using google docs; that less than the time it would have taken me to launch emacs remember the syntax for a doctype. Sure google forms sucks for anything more complex than a five bullet points questions but it beats sending excel sheet by mail.

    Am I scared to have all my company information on Google's and third party servers, sure. We keep backups. I sometime wonder if it's a mistake but franckly at this point relying on Google to treat my data respectfully or relying on myself to do a decent admin works and fight off "Chinese" attack it more or less the same. The cloud is cheaper (for us).

    When the company will have grown (fingers crossed) we'll re-assess the situation and most likely move things back in-house. In the mean time it's a boon for us.

    TL;DR: my SMB can't afford to manage everything we use in-house. Google apps and SAAS (aka cloud) is cheaper.