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Serena Software expects to save $750,000 per year by shedding
Microsoft Exchange Server in favor of Google's Gmail application for its 800 employees, officials of
the Web development software maker told eWEEK Nov. 12.

The move, slated to be completed by the end of 2008, is a coup for Google. The
search engine provider has been struggling to entice customers to switch from the
Microsoft Outlook e-mail client and Exchange Server on-premises application to
its SAAS (software as a service) Web mail, word processing, spreadsheet and
other applications.

GOOGLE is poised to cut deeper into Australia's enterprise email market as a result of winning the NSW Education Department contract.

Project management specialist SMS Technology won a deal in July said to be worth $10 million to manage the department's deployment of 1.5 million Gmail accounts.

The project is due to be completed by December.

SMS chief executive Tom Stianos said four organisations with email contracts valued at $60 million had expressed interest in using email systems similar to the department's Gmail system.

The organisations included at least two government agencies and a financial institution, he said.

"That was my introduction to public service," he says. "In Arlington, what we realized after those attacks, was that if we had our one main data center shut down, we wouldn't be able to support government."

Vivek Kundra, chief technology officer of the D.C. government.

So when he took over as the district's CTO in 2007, he decided that "moving to the cloud" would have its merits, because a company such as Google has so many data centers that it would ensure better business continuity and security.

"Their data centers are geographically dispersed," he says. "That was attractive to me from a security perspective."

If you haven't read CIO.com's account of Microsoft's frantic attempts to keep Procter and Gamble from using Google Apps, read it now. As I reported last year, I've personally seen very large companies kicking off large pilots of Google Apps to wean themselves off Microsoft, but I've yet to see such a dramatic response from Microsoft.

Microsoft is blase about Google Apps in public, just as it used to be about open source, but incidents like P&G are making the software giant realize that it has a serious problem on its hands.

One of the more troubling things about Google Chrome is something I found in its Terms of Service agreement (which most people click through without reading before downloading Chrome).

“17. Advertisements

17.1 Some of the Services are supported by advertising revenue and may display advertisements and promotions. These advertisements may be targeted to the content of information stored on the Services, queries made through the Services or other information.

17.2 The manner, mode and extent of advertising by Google on the Services are subject to change without specific notice to you.

17.3 In consideration for Google granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Google may place such advertising on the Services.”

Google is an advertising company, and they already collect a huge amount of personal data on everyone to target ads at us. Being the browser vendor will give them that much more personal and behavioral data, which will be even more worrisome if the Chrome browser evolves into a cloud operating system.

Alistair Croll put it best when he wrote:

“Browsers have made computers interchangeable; most of us can work on whatever machine we have at hand, be it a PC, Mac or an XO laptop. As a result, the browser is the new desktop. Today’s browser competition is less about who renders HTML properly, and more about what the incumbent browser is and how well it accommodates whatever new applications the Internet throws its way.”

Google is introducing video into Google Apps with the hope that companies will be attracted to a service that helps with training and internal communication but also removes the hassles of hosting video.

According to Google executives who spoke to CNET News last week, the search giant has tailored some of the technology developed by YouTube specifically for corporate clients. The offering is part of Google's continuing efforts to replace traditional office software with so-called cloud-computing services.

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