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By Michael Hickins
Google is seeing momentum for Google Apps, its cloud-based applications suite, according to enterprise cloud services implementation specialists, in large part because of the economic downturn.
Iein Valdez, director of product development for Google applications at cloud systems integrator Appirio, said the "trend is favorable" for Google and other cloud-based applications. But Google has also made its own noise with Google Wave, a collaboration platform that was introduced to developers this summer and is currently being shown to certain customers as a preview.
According to Valdez, there is considerable interest in Wave, although many customers are still unsure of how it will fit into their overall IT landscape, or even whether to use it. "Wave is one of those things where there's a lot of enterprise applicability -- in the current environment, lots of enterprises are trying to collaborate better and faster and cheaper," he said.
Google Wave is an online collaboration tool featuring a single interface that can be viewed simultaneously -- and written to in real time -- by multiple parties. Users can drag and drop other applications onto the Wave in order to view and discuss documents in multiple formats, as well as chat or have voice conversations. Valdez said one of the ways Appirio plans to use Wave is to create robots that will persist on the Wave and connect to other software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, like Salesforce.com's SFA.
This could allow participants to learn about sales opportunities in the context of a conversation in real time.
"In general, it's going to be a very good platform for us to connect cloud-based applications together," said Valdez. "We envision a world where a series of bots and chats can be connected to Salesforce or Intacct, the robot can listen to a conversation, wait for a keyword and look in the other application to see if there's an opportunity while participants are in the middle of their conversation."
Another cloud systems integrator, LTech, is focused on the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) segment, and is trying to capitalize on this nascent interest in the cloud with more attractive pricing options.
LTech is lowering its pricing from $50 per user per month to $5 per user per month, including an enhanced service level agreement and ongoing customer support, and can be locked in by customers for one, two or three years. LTech also provides deployment and migration services to ensure customers make a smooth transition to Google Apps.
"We know it can be easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to pay using a subscription model of smaller monthly payments to make cash flow more manageable," said Ed Laczynski, founder and CTO of LTech.
Ironically, the downturn is giving enterprises greater incentive to find innovative and cost-effective ways of increasing revenues, and SaaS applications are winning converts because they don't involve significant capital expenditures.
And according to Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, this trend isn't limited to the SMB segment. She said her firm is "starting to see some real traction with large organizations" for cloud-based services, particularly SaaS-based call center applications.
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