At last Google (aka Search giant) has decided to make the search in Google Apps more convenient. We can't say that until now it was bad, but if you wanted to find an email - you had to open GMail, if you wanted to find a document - you opened Google Docs, etc. Thus, to get a full view about any client or task you had to collect data from various sources. Now GMail has added a new feature called Google Apps Search that allows to the search for documents from Google Docs and pages from Google Sites right inside your inbox (you can activate this feature in the GMail Labs). Unfortunately, this search does not include results from Google Calendar and Google Notebook. Unlike Google, Zoho was more fundamental in online office search. Early this summer it released Zoho Search, which is a separate service (like google.com) that can search in all major Zoho apps. As you can see, Zoho prefers to create new services, and Google is positioning GMail, as the primary user interface for all Google Apps applications.

Today, Google has announced that it stops further development of its revolutionary collaboration service Google Wave. The official reason - "service has not seen the user adoption we would have liked". Two months ago Google Wave was opened to public and included into Google Apps, but apparently, not too many people gave it a second chance after not successful beta-testing. Google Wave will continue to exist, but in the future it may be closed - i.e. the service will be in the same state, as Google Notebook (although still with new user registration). For those who use the service, Google plans to open source the code of the main modules (so that they could restore the basic functionality on its own servers) and provide tools for migrating data from Google Wave. And now about why this occurred with the service that was supposed to change the world:

As you know, Google services are popular both for business and for personal use. That is why, many users often have a need to switch from working to personal account (for example, to check mail). This required multiple logout/login procedures. But now this process will be much more easier - Google is rolling out multi-account sign-in that allows to switch between accounts using the top menu. You can activate this feature and add accounts on this page. However, switching between accounts will work not for all services - only for GMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Sites, Google Voice, App Engine and Google Code. In addition, those who activate multi-account sign-in - would have to to give up the offline features in Gmail and Calendar. Recall that soon another related problem will be solved soon - some personal services (Google Reader, Blogger, Youtube ...) will become available in Google Apps accounts.

In addition to the business version of GAE and cloud storage GS, at the I/O conference Google introduced for developers the new APIs for GMail and Google Buzz. New GMail API allows developers to embed applications directly to emails (as gadgets). These gadgets are currently only available for GMail in Google Apps, and may be added by account administrator from Google Apps Marketplace. For example, Gist and Xobni gadgets display person social information at the bottom of email (as they do it in MS Outlook and Lotus Notes). The Manymoon gadget allows to quickly create a task or project from the email. Taking into account that virtually all enterprise collaborative and social tools use email for notifications, we can expect an avalanche of new GMail gadgets, as well as increasing popularity of this email service in the enterprise segment.

Pretty silently (not like when beta testing was started) the revolutionary service Google Wave has been opened to a public and added to the business suite of Google Apps. Interest towards Google Wave has been reducing since the release of this service (about a year ago). The primary reason for this is its complexity compared to the direct competitor - E-mail. Besides Google Wave appeared to be buggy during testing and scared even geeks. However, now Lars Rasmussen, the Wave project manager, argues that Google Wave is ready for high load and performs fast enough. In addition, developers have simplified adding comments and search for new changes in wave. They also have corrected the lack of integration with email - you can now set the email-notifications about changes in waves (although you can't add comments in the opposite direction - from the email).

In response to the recent launch of VMForce, Google today announced the upcoming version of its cloud platform for enterprise users - Google App Engine for Business. Until now, GAE was actually not suitable for hosting enterprise applications. First, GAE does not provides enterprise-ready support, security and service level guarantees. Besides, it supports only one database - Big Table, which is not used in existing business applications, and locks clients into one platform. The enterprise version of GAE, which is scheduled for 4 quarter of 2010, will fix these issues. Corporate customers will be offered a premium support, 99.9% SLA, administration panel for managing security policies. In addition, GAE will add support for SSL and SQL databases. Instead of difficult-to-forecast scheme of payment for computer resources, the clients will pay a flat rate - $8/month for app user.

As you know, Google Apps contains only those applications that are useful for collaboration. And because of this, Google Apps users have a problem with accessing other Google services - they constantly need to switch between accounts. Especially it looks stupid if company is using Blogger for corporate blog, YouTube for corporate video-channel, running ad campaigns in Adwords, hosting corporate galleries in Picasa, or its employees are using Google Reader as an enterprise RSS client. According to the post in the Google Enterprise Blog, this summer most Google services will become available in Google Apps. It remains only to solve the issue with IT administrators that want to control and monitor these new services.

If you develop SaaS service or intend to move the IT infrastructure to the Internet, then, of course, you can buy VPS or dedicated server. But in the era of Cloud Computing that option is obsolete. If you want to have a really reliable, secure and scalable hosting,  to automate most operations and (eventually) save money, it is logical to use one of the cloud platforms. And, depending on your goal, you can select a very interesting solution, which provides far more opportunities superior than conventional hosting. For example, for SaaS developers some platforms provide ready client base. Below - our top ten list of cloud platforms.

Major SaaS vendors are now less interested in providing applications - they want to create web platforms and grab the world (and earn commission on the other developers). Salesforce was the first to play this game, then Google, NetSuite, SugarCRM and others jumped into this wagon. Box.net (that doesn't have such financial strength as the above mentioned companies) invented even more interesting platform strategy. Box.net wants to be present on each popular platform. First, they created the connector for Force.com, then joint the Intuit Partner Program and Google Apps Marketplace, and recently released modules for SuiteCloud and Sugar 6. Thus, they build the cross-platform cloud content management system. This system allows to store all content in a single online repository and access it in different SaaS systems used in the company: CRM, ERP, Collaboration system. Even more interesting is the opportunity to create shared cross-company extranet based on Box.net: for example, the same file may be available from Salesforce account owned by company A and NetSuite account owned by company B.

Recently, Google released the next anti-microsoft tool - Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange, the plugin which allows you to easily move mail, calendars and contacts from Exchange to Google Apps. Last year they released the utility that syncs Outlook with Google Apps, but now you can import data directly from the Exchange server. Previously, Microsoft just ignored such events, or commented that Google Apps - is just a toy that no serious company will use. But Google's constant pressure is making them nervous. Microsoft recently launched the channel on Youtube, which contains videos explaining why MS Office products are better than Google's. For example, here's the video Exchange vs GMail:

As expected, Google has launched the online store Google Apps Marketplace, which allows developers to easily access the Google Apps userbase, which counts 25 million users. More than 50 providers already used this opportunity - now the Google Apps users (directly in the control panel) can add Atlassian Jira bug tracker, DimDim web conferencing, Freshbooks online accounting, Box.net intranet, Manymoon project management, SlideRocket presentations, etc. There you can find even such heavyweights as NetSuite and SuccessFactors. We also note the presence of Zoho apps - Google has once again demonstrated its loyalty towards the competitor.

Recently the planet has become a dangerous place. Haiti, Chile, Turkey. Where will be the next earthquake? What will you do if the roof fall on your server (or data center) and all your business data will be lost? Apparently, Google decided to benefit on this situation and published the post that talks about how Google Apps protect business data from disasters. To ensure the security of user data in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video it's beeing synchronized in real time between the two remote data centers. If suddenly one of these data centers will be destroyed, the data will be immediately replicated to the third data center and so on. This technology is used in the large companies, but, for example, real-time synchronization of 25Gb Mailbox costs them $150-500. And Google offers this service for free, despite the fact that the service is used by 2 million companies with 20 million active users.

As you know, Google Apps has no specialized project management solution, and this is very disappointing, as there are many other useful utilities for online workgroups there. However, there are three tools that can be used to solve this problem. And the first of them is Google Sites. You can use Google Sites to manage one large project, or create a site for each small project in it (there are even some templates for project sites). Since Google Sites is, in fact, a wiki, you can easily work with the project documentation there. In addition, Google Sites allows you to embed group calendar (Google Calendar), task list (Google Tasks) and documents from Google Docs. All these elements are very useful for project management, but of course, task collaboration in this solution - is the weakness.

Today Microsoft has officially opened its cloud platform Windows Azure. It's a cloud for deploying SaaS services and hosting enterprise applications, that provides Microsoft-focused infrastructure and development tools. However, Azure also supports PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, Eclipse and Zend. The main Azure advantage over Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Cloud is the high level of automation, allowing developers to focuse on their applications, rather than on the infrastructure. In addition, this platform enables to integrate hosted apps with the local IT infrastructure with the help of SOAP, REST and XML (thus supporting Microsoft's S+S strategy). The cost of using Windows Azure - is lower than the cost of Windows-infrastructure, built on Amazon.

The soap opera about fabled GDrive (Google's online storage service) is finally over. As we expected, Google will not create a separate service. Instead, Google Docs allow now to upload any files and use them for online collaboration. Each account provides 1Gb free of charge. Additional memory can be purchased for $ 0.25/Gb per year. Google Apps users can purchase additional 5GB for $17 per year. Maximum file size is 250 MB. Many file types can be viewed online using Google Viewer (unfortunately, video is not supported). In addition, Google opened the Google Documents List API, which allows third-party applications to synchronize files with Google Docs or use it as an online file storage. There are already 3 useful applications using this API:

Today Google unveiled the long-awaited smart phone Nexus One, and of course we wondered, how this device can affect the mobile Enterprise market. It turned out that compared to the main competitor iPhone, G1 or other Android-smartphones, Nexus One is almost nothing new. Yes, it's designed to work with web-applications - it has the best on the market touch screen (480x800), virtual keyboard, Chrome Lite browser with dynamic scaling, support for Flash, Ajax and Google Gears, but the browser works slower than the iPhone's Safari. Yes, it can access mobile Internet via EDGE, 3G (UMTS / HSUPA), Wi-Fi, but there is nothing unusual. It costs $530, so the price will not be a the reason for business owners to equip their staff with this google phone.

Finally Google has made this simple and logical move - Google Groups have been added to its online suite of business applications. Google Groups allow you to create workspaces for departments or projects that include wiki, discussions and files. And also Google Groups allow you to quickly provide access to the various elements in Google Apps (documents, calendars, videos, sites) to certain group of employees. And when the user is excluded from the group, he loses access to all the associated resources. Groups in Google Apps can be created either by the administrator or users themselves, if the administrator has allowed this. The group owner set up access rules, public access options, invites participants and moderate their actions.

Google opened a new front in the war for business users. At that time Google pushes the idea that companies appreciate openness of business applications, i.e. the possibility to import/export their data to/from these apps. At the same time the leading business software vendors (IBM, Microsoft) use to lock user data and don't provide easy tools to export it in the needed format. The new Google's project Data Liberation Front contains information about how to export data from Google applications. For example it gives guidelines of how to use GMail over POP3 and IMAP protocols, or how to export Google Calendar in ICAL format.

A year ago Google opened Google Solutions Marketplace - online store for third-party applications that can be added to Google Apps account. (Something similar to Salesforce AppExchange). But unlike Salesforce, Google doesn't promote this marketplace. Even, there is no link to applications catalog in the Google Apps control panel. Nevertheless, already about two hundreds different applications have been submitted to the marketplace. They share the Google Apps login and integrate with native apps (like Docs or Calendar) by means of APIs. For example, you can create a project management system and link its internal tasks to documents in Google Docs or contacts in Google Contacts.