Submission + - Google aims for desktop plartform with Apps
InfoWorldMike writes: "Ephraim Schwartz takes a bigger pic, day-after look at the Google Apps news this last week, with which it added key business applications — a word processor and spreadsheet — to Google Apps. The company is now offering the kind of support corporate IT would expect: IT management tools, technical support, and service level agreements for uptime. Even all that, however, does not tell the entire story or give the scope of Google's plans, Schwartz writes in his news analysis. In its press announcement and in an interview with a Google executive, Dave Giroud, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Unit, Google made it clear that it will offer APIs forhttp://weblog.infoworld.com/daily/archives/2007 /02/interview_googl.html business integration, thus creating a business platform not unlike what Salesforce.com offers with AppExchange. An InfoWorld podcast interview with Google's Rajen Sheth, product manager for Apps, also makes it pretty clear. Is this a play on Google's part to go head to head against a player in its own backyard, Salesforce.com and its AppExchange?
Despit some roadblocks, sources say Google is buying up a great deal of dark fiber all around the country and at the same time hiring telecommunications engineers and delivering during the past year or two thousands of server blades to what are called Peering Centers, datacenters where networks converge to optimize connectivity."