Google Launches Enterprise App Store

Google is looking to extend its cloud computing footprint within the enterprise with the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace, an online store for business software. The business applications are integrated with Google Apps, the company's suite of software as a service (SaaS) productivity and collaboration solutions. Google says they already have 50 partners offering solutions in the Google Apps Marketplace including Intuit, Manymoon, Concur, Jobvite and eFax.

According to Google:

Once installed to a company's domain, these third-party applications work like native Google applications. With administrator approval, they may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity. Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps. With OpenID integration, Google Apps users can access the other applications without signing in separately to each. The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike.

There have been various efforts, and certainly a lot of talk, related to enterprise application marketplaces. From time to time technology vendors have played around with such ideas, but they typically end up as not much more than a partner solutions catalog on a web page. There are some exceptions like Salesforce.com's AppExchange. And, of course, Apple's App Store, but that really targets consumers more than businesses.

But, the Google Apps Marketplace could change that. First, it leverages the broad success of Google Apps, which according to the company, have been deployed at more than 2 million businesses and 25 million users. This is on top of the incredible reach of the company's core products and its very, very deep pockets. Moreover, it is the user base that developers will find most enticing. Secondly, Google is taking a different tact than both Apple and Salesforce.com by allowing a more open approach to how partner apps get deployed. They don't need to run on Google App Engine, the company's platform as a service (PaaS) development environment. Rather, applications need only connect to Google's systems through OpenID and OAuth. That should make Google a more popular destination for software vendors because the barriers to entry are lower and the rules less stringent.

Give the company credit for creating the Google App Marketplace in such a way. It leverages Google's strengths in many of the right ways and differentiates them in what is shaping up to be the next big platform war. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com respond.