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Google Opens Apps Marketplace
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."
I don't see it here or the TFA so http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Nah, it was recently removed from App Store because it was found to be competitor to Apple products.
I suspect that they could be making a play for the smallish business segment(not that they'd actively turn down big ones; but that they have the greatest initial hopes there.
In a large company or organization, you can afford to hire the right people and build the right infrastructure to get handy stuff like single sign on(except for that one crap legacy app that everybody hates; but so it goes), user configurations that follow users between machines, backups that actually work, a network infrastructure that isn't a complete clusterfuck, standardized hardware and system images, and the like. Plus, over a large enough userbase, the somewhat bursty and unpredictable day-to-day IT costs can be averaged into something resembling a "TCO per capita" number that isn't a complete lie, which keeps the bean counters happy.
The smaller you get, though, the less likely that these things are true(particularly in businesses run by non techies. Your one man linux kernel development consultancy is probably Just Fine Thanks. Bob's Indy Auto Body is probably an IT disaster waiting to happen on a small scale). For a smaller outfit, having the technical expertise and infrastructure to provide the features that enterprises take for granted is hard. Having a decent admin permanently on staff is expensive overkill; but having to depend on consultants and geek squad visits is very pricey per-incident, can mean seriously uneven quality of service, and is hard to predict and budget for.
If Google can use the third party offerings to fill out the missing aspects of its Docs and Gmail offerings(payroll, accounting, any number of domain-specific software oddities), they could have a very compelling offering for a smaller business without much in-house technical expertise: Works on basically any modern computer with a browser and an internet connection, single sign on, some degree of integration between email, documents, and calendar, and a familiar interface, backups happen silently and automatically for you, all for some predictable subscription fee. Geeks with the chops to DIY, or larger outfits who can afford proper IT staff have had all this for some time, and will be harder to sway(geeks are likely to be cheap and/or afraid of Google's sinister intentions, large outfits will have legacy baggage of one sort or another); but a lot of smaller businesses have basically the same quality IT as home users(none at all, totally fucked); but with a good bit more money on the line.