Google Aims to Be the Platform For Businesses [eWeek]

Quite a contrast to a recent Google Apps rant from FSJ

What are your goals for Google's Apps for the enterprise for 2008?

[Dave Girouard: Vice President and General Manager of Google's Enterprise business:] We're getting amazingly fast traction with small businesses, and now we're starting to see bigger businesses more. We definitely have some large businesses that are evaluating or piloting Google Apps. They like the vision that you ought to have some different types of solutions out there like Google as alternatives to IBM or Microsoft.

Any of the big guys, like Accenture or IBM Global Services, they all look at SAAS and it doesn't quite fit their model. They're used to saying, 'SAP installation, send in the school buses and we'll put people on site for a year.' SAAS is different, it's easier. What I would hope and expect in the coming months is that you're going to see big companies coming out and saying 'we're using Apps and we're using them to scale.

Google Aims to Be the Platform For Businesses