Google has finally made Gmail and Google Apps for Enterprise their focus area – these are no longer just one of their experimental areas.

Within just last couple of weeks there were a few significant updates to Gmail/Google Apps (probably more than we’ve seen for the whole year before that!):

• Offline support both for Gmail and Calendar.
• Real group/distribution list support (nested groups, security groups, no more size limits).
• Push email, calendar and contacts for iPhone and Windows Mobile * (they have already had some solutions for  Blackberry and Android)

* [Update] The push calendar and contact sync might actually be not as exciting as some reported initially. First of all, it does not include email. Secondly, calendar and contacts are synchronized via Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol. Which basically means that Google on the server side pretends that it is Microsoft Exchange. The problem is that if in fact you have corporate Exchange server and want to keep getting your email from it, but also your private data from Google – you won’t be able to do that. There’s just no way to specify two ActiveSync servers in Windows Mobile or iPhone.

And consider other improvements introduced within last couple of months such as:

• Tasks,
• Amazing PDF support,
• Voice and video support in their instant messaging,
• Multiple inbox view.

Some of these were so obvious shortcomings that you can’t help thinking “what took them so long?”

My guess is that what we are seeing is the result of Google internal resource reallocations. When the economy downturn started, Google started closing many of their projects and imposing restrictions on Google’s famous 20% time projects (it used to be: spend 20% of your time on anything you like – not any more).

The fact that Gmail and Google Calendar are getting so many updates lately is a clear sign that these were identified by Google as their priority area. Erik Schmidt seemed to confirm that on their quarter results call:

“By focusing on the one million Google Apps business customers, [you] can get enterprise-quality applications hosted by Google at a dramatically lower price,” Google’s Schmidt said.

I guess for us this means that 2009 can be the year when Google really tries to push harder to make Google Apps a success. And by the way, the talk of how they are complimentary to Microsoft seems to be over. This Thursday they are holding a customer testimony webcast on migration from Exchange to Google Apps.

Technorati Tags:
GMail, Google, Google Apps, mobile, SaaS
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |