This week we discuss Gmail's new phone feature (watch out Skype!) and a recent study by IBM's X-force on the greatest threat to cloud adoption. 

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"Over 1,000,000 calls placed from Gmail in just 24 hours!" Google tweeted Thursday, evidently pleased with the number.

For comparison, there are somewhat more than 300 million people in the United States. If the average person makes 10 calls per day--research in 2008 put the number at 208 calls per month--that means about one out of every 3,000 calls in the U.S. went through the service on its first day.

The service lets Gmail users make free calls to U.S. and Canada and inexpensive calls to phones in other countries. It uses Gmail as an interface and optionally can integrate with Google Voice to receive calls as well.

As Google looks to assure potential business customers that its cloud-based suite of applications is a worthy alternative to on-premises solutions, it's getting help from independent service providers.

One example is Backupify, an online backup, archiving and export service that unveiled support for Google Apps this week.

Cambridge, MA-based Backupify said it automatically backs up all data stored in a user's Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Sites account. Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) cloud-based system stores users files, but Backupify said its system ensures data won't be lost by error. Backupify actually leverages another cloud service, Amazon's storage cloud storage, to backup files.