As Google turns 10, enterprise success in question

The search giant celebrates its 10th anniversary of incorporation this month

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Google could have opted to just target universities and SMBs with the Standard and Education editions of Apps, generating revenue from advertising. It could also have been content to lure SMBs to the Premier version, which is a very affordable option at US$50 per user per year, when compared to Microsoft Office and Exchange.

"The things preventing Google from being attractive to enterprises aren't necessarily big issues for SMBs," Creese said.

Google could rake in robust revenue from SMBs, which are often underserved by major vendors and hold off on purchasing IT products that they need but aren't priced right for them, Koplowitz said. "There's a lot of money to be made there," he said.

This accounts for much of the success Google has had with its Search Appliance and Google Mini, which have disrupted the enterprise search market, where systems have traditionally been pricey and complicated to install, manage and use. Priced aggressively and built with a low-maintenance, plug-and-play design, those products have hit a sweet spot with SMBs and schools.

The University of Florida in the US has been using the Search Appliance since 2002 and currently has two of them to index its entire public Web presence -- from its main site to individual college and department sites and Web servers from specific research teams.

"The appliance has always been easy to set up and maintain. The administrative interface gives a very clear overview of how the appliance sees your Web sites, and makes it easy to update the index," said Daniel Westermann-Clark, Web developer at the university.

According to Google, more than 500,000 organizations have signed up for Google Apps, totaling more than 10 million end users, of which "hundreds of thousands" are using Premier.

However, Google has made it clear it has its sights set on large companies as well, recently releasing a newly architected version of the Search Appliance that can index more than three times as many documents as the current model and improves the product's IT management functions.

But it's the Apps Premier expectations that are riding particularly high. As CIOs warm up to the SaaS (software-as-a-service) approach of application delivery as an option to the traditional on-premise model, Google sees a big opportunity to take business away from Microsoft's Office/Exchange and from IBM's Notes/Domino and rake in big bucks.