Google has launched Google Apps for Your Domain, a suite of hosted collaboration applications for small to medium-size businesses (SMBs), universities, groups and affinity organizations, with plans to expand to larger companies by year's end. The service for larger companies won't be free, with details regarding what it will entail and the pricing structure to be announced when the rollout date is set.
The offerings are based on Google's free consumer versions of the applications and are designed to allow organizations to provide e-mail and other services to employees, students or members without having to manage the software or hardware the services run on. It follows Google's February release of a similar offering for organisations called 'GMail for Your Domain', focused solely on web e-mail.
The free offering will include Gmail and Google's Calendar, Talk and Page Creator applications, all of which have either been rolled out in recent months or which the company has been integrating with each other this year. More applications will be added over time, said Matthew Glotzbach, head of products for Google's enterprise division.
"We're trying to take a new look at what it means to collaborate," said Rajen Sheth, product manager for Google Apps for Your Domain. "There are obvious competitors out there, but I think people will see this as a fresh look."
The intent is to allow companies and organizations access to collaboration applications even if they can't afford internal IT support or don't want to devote IT resources to those tasks, with the aim of 'really driving down the cost and the maintenance', Glotzbach said.
Google will host the applications relieving companies of the need to maintain or install software on individual PCs; support tasks often more costly than software itself. "If we do it right, we get the best of both worlds; consumer-friendly software, but also low-cost business applications," said Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise division, which sells search software to companies.
Ever since the launch of Gmail, Google has collected feedback from small to medium-size businesses and universities, in particular, regarding that application and it has also been beta testing Gmail for Your Domain for a while. Google Apps for Your Domain is an extension of that, Glotzbach said.
Initial apps are Gmail web e-mail, the Google Talk instant message and Web phone-calling service, group scheduling on Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator for Web page design. "It really is intended to be a platform," Girouard said.
"One of the fundamental benefits of the software as service approach is that you can just turn on new features over time." The Writely word processor and Google Spreadsheet are candidates for future inclusion in Google Apps, Girouard said.
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