Google made an apsassination attempt on Microsoft last week with the release of a premium word processing and spreadsheet software suite. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a server-side set of software applications designed to offer a low-cost option to Microsoft Office. (This article is being written in the free version of Google Docs)
On Friday, Google announced the release of Google Apps Premier Edition.
According to a press release issued by Google,
“Google Apps Premier Edition is available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and business integration capabilities.
“Google Appsâ„¢, launched as a free service in August 2006, is a suite of applications that includes Gmailâ„¢ webmail services, Google Calendarâ„¢ shared calendaring, Google Talkâ„¢ instant messaging and voice-over-IP, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain. More than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of universities now use the service. Google Apps Premier Edition now joins Google Apps Standard Edition and Google Apps Education Edition, both of which will continue to be offered for free to organizations.”
“Businesses are looking for applications that are simple and intuitive for employees, but also offer the security, reliability and manageability their organizations require,” said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager, Google Enterprise. “With Google Apps, our customers can tap into an unprecedented stream of technology and innovation at a fraction of the cost of traditional installed solutions.”
Proctor and Gamble and General Electric have signed on as charter enterprise customers. Google Apps Pemier Edition features; 10 gigs of storage space, APIs for business integration, and advertising turned off by default. It also includes 24/7 support and 99.9% uptime.
The biggest drawback to using server-side software is the necessity to always be connected to the ‘net. Google Apps allows users to save information to their desktops or harddrives in Word, OpenOffice and PDF format so working offline should not be too difficult an issue.
Have a question and need quick answers? 
There is a good post here
http://www.beyondvc.com/2007/02/goffice_continu.html
on online and offline issues. I still think GoogleApps is more a competition for MS Exchange the for MS Office. Anyway… I have been using Google Apps since August now … and I think its very cool. But the best thing is the Google API. For example we are developing an FREE open source “business application platform” (think salesforce.com). Our first application is working tightly integrated with GOOGLE APPS. http://www.applicationexchange.com.
Comment by edbong — Tuesday, February 27, 2007 @ 9:23 am