Clouds, Disruption, and the Enterprise

Most folks think of two things when Google is mentioned: search and ads.

However, Google is grounded in a culture of continuous innovation, so they're always doing something new. Although this apparently chaotic creative activity (Exploration) would not seem to fit the needs of an enterprise(Execution), Google continues to deploy capabilities that target the enterprise.

Several recent postings (perhaps triggered by the release of Google Apps Engine) have interesting takes on how Google may (or may not) fit into the enterprise apps domain.

This report discusses Gartner's take on how disruptive Google is, and seems to imply that Google (in the near/mid-term) is best suited for infrastructure (including the possible hosting of some mission-critical capabilities), Exploratory capabilities, non-critical Execution capabilities, and capabilities that are not key to competitive advantage.

This report has a few warnings about using Google for enterprise apps.

Dion Hinchcliffe has a nice compare/contrast between Amazon & Google's PaaS capabilities using a stack consisting of Client Capabilities, Cloud Computing Services, and General Purpose Support Services. The barrier to entry (of using PaaS) continues to drop, but Dion notes that governance, security, privacy, and control are major hurdles to enterprise-class Execution support.

And, Phil Wainewright notes that the integration of Saleforce and Google Apps is a significant shot across Microsoft's bow. I tend to agree with Phil that most folks seem to under-estimate the potential impact of what I've been calling a "composable CONOPS" for the past 3 years.

Dan Farber also discusses this topic and has an interesting slide of "Google's Vision". It is basically a taxonomy: Search/Apps/Ads layered on top of Platform/Scale and Footprint/Trust...my snap reaction is "sounds about right."

Finally, Dana Gardner discusses how all this will required a fundamental rethinking of data.