Google have just announced their Google Apps Marketplace, a huge step forward for SME’s and forward-looking Large Enterprises.
Google Apps is a powerful, affordable and highly reliable infrastructure. It is delivered at a cost point that is hard for even the largest of enterprises to match. The Google Apps features are still a little limited relative to Microsoft Office, but are improving all the time particularly as Google executes consistently and aggressively on their strategy of speeding up the web (Chrome, Chrome OS, DNS services, Caching) and driving low cost services to the cloud (App Engine, GWT). This is what disruptive innovation looks like
Enterprises face notoriously difficult integration and usability challenges for their systems. In recent years we’ve seen innovation, forward thinking and major advances coming in the consumer space while enterprises watch helpless from behind hard to use, expensive to configure and impossible to integrate systems.
A Google App Store for Google Apps based on the Google App Engine will change this space forever.
Applications would be available for instant installation at a reasonable price. The integration and configuration would be much simpler, as organisations live on a predefined Google stack. (For good or bad, sometimes you just need to choose a particular cool-aid to drink for a while.)
Developers will flock to a platform that allows simple marketing and distribution access to SME organisations with a clear stack. It will reduce sales cycles, increase sales opportunities and provide a green field space for rapid improvement and innovation.
Overall, the enterprise software space will be disrupted one app at a time. It won’t start in the largest companies, it won’t be immediate, but it will be fast, continuous and drive corporate productivity to new levels.
