Zoho launched the 26th addition to its growing suite of Web-based applications: Zoho Books. It's now available both from Zoho and from the Google Apps Marketplace. It costs $24 per month, with two users included. Additional users will cost $5 per month.

The application also integrates with Paypal, Google Checkout & Authorize.net to receive payments. Bank transactions need currently need to be adding manually, but Zoho spokesperson Raju Vegesna says bank integration will be implemented soon.

Google this week unveiled its Chrome Web Store, which aims to do for the Web what Apple's App Store did for mobile devices: It provides a place to explore and "install" Web-based applications.

The launch was announced alongside a new netbook running Chrome OS, Google's browser-centric operating system. And the Web Store is part of Chrome, Google's super-fast Web browser. Except that many Chrome apps can run in other browsers, since they're actually just websites. Oh, and don't mistake apps for "extensions," which are add-ons for the Chrome browser.

Confused yet?

In the 1980s, Amit Singh and Nikesh Arora, then classmates in Delhi's Air Force School at Subroto Park, often used to team up to beat schoolmates at basketball. Now, the duo have teamed up again at the Google office in Mountain View to beat the likes of Microsoft at the game of software. While Arora is president of the search giant’s global sales operations and business development, Singh is vice-president , international sales and operations for Google Enterprise. The company on Thursday previewed its yet to be launched 'Cloud Connect' , a tool which has the potential to allow users bypass MS Office, and directly save multiple versions of Word or Excel files on the cloud, in a collaborative manner. On an India visit, Amit Singh talks to ET on Google's cloud strategy and his take on whether consumers will buy software as a product in future. Excerpts:

 

What's Google's long term strategy behind launching Cloud Connect?

We believe that Office software users don't need to buy so many copies of Microsoft Office. They can directly collaborate and work on the cloud via Google Docs. Our Cloud Connect on Google Docs will allow Gmail users to download the application from web, and install it inside Microsoft Office as a link. Whenever, a user saves a copy inside MS Word, Powerpoint or Excel, it automatically gets updated on the cloud. Prior saved versions are also available at all locations in the world where the document is open. Last year, when the Icelandic Volcano erupted, hundreds of Googlers were stranded across the world. We sent them a message on Gmail, to open a Google Docs spreadsheet, and input their name location and travel plans. It worked perfectly well, and people were safely taken out of their locations. More and more people will start to use software as a service, rather than buy it as a product. We are testing Google Cloud Connect now and will launch it soon. It will be a free to download product.

 

Is Google afraid of Facebook now that the world's largest social networking giant is entering into email services?

Facebook has done a great job of social networking. But not many serious business users may like to use a social networking application for enterprise email use. Anyways, Mark (Zuckerberg) has himself said that Facebook messages are not email. It's not a 'Gmail killer' . Most people in India will continue to use Gmail.

 

How are Google’s Enterprise and Commerce search doing? What is Google Enterprise's strategy for India?

Google's three enterprise offerings include Apps, Enterprise Search and Geo services. We have almost 30 million users globally of Google Enterprise offerings. Of these almost one million users in India already use Google Enterprise services, within just few months of their launch. We have had a talk with some of the largest Indian retailers to incorporate our search to increase their sales. In India, we have about 300 engineers working on Google enterprise applications. We will double our India headcount to 600 and user base to 2 million in next 12 months. With Gmail, Google Docs, Search, Calendar, Sites, Voice and Video Chat apps for enterprises, combined with Chrome and Android operating systems we expect to grow exponentially.

 

SOURCE: Economic Times

Remember when Steve Ballmer made this statement? "About 70 percent of our folks are doing things that are entirely cloud-based, or cloud inspired," he told an audience at the University of Washington last March. "And by a year from now that will be 90 percent."

At the time I thought: Yeah, right.

The cloud is so difficult to define, and Microsoft's cloud offerings had been so slow to emerge, I couldn't bring myself to believe that claim, especially with Ballmer's "cloud inspired" location leaving several football fields of wiggle room. For those reasons and more, two weeks ago I pretty much dismissed the announcement of the forthcoming Microsoft Office 365 as a repackaging of Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services), a cloud offering that has failed to get much traction.

A North Hollywood solution provider was the wind beneath Virgin America's cloud computing wings as the well-known airline cut its on-premise ties and took to the cloud with Google and Google Apps.

SADA Systems' cloud computing project with Virgin America and Google originally took flight in July with an official launch in October. And come next week, all of Virgin America's 1,700 employees will be live in the cloud.

Cloud computing will save the U.S. government quite a bit of money and improve its efficiency, no doubt, but until government officials are convinced of its security, the migration to this new computing paradigm is likely to be a slow one. As the delayed deployment of the Los Angeles police department’s new Google (GOOG) email system illustrates, the threat of unknown security risks far outweighs the 25 to 50 percent savings in IT costs that the Brookings Institution claims U.S. agencies can save by moving to cloud computing.

So Google’s announcement Monday that its Apps for Government cloud-based productivity suite had gained certification under the Federal Information Security Management Act was quite a win for the company. In theory, that seal of approval will instill in government a modicum of confidence in the security and reliability of the cloud-computing model.

In the wake UC Davis’ announcement that the school was ending an Apps pilot for faculty because of privacy concerns, Google is celebrating a milestone. As of today, 8 million students, faculty and staff at educational institutions around the world are using Google Apps. Google says that the U.S. has about 16 million college students total, so the productivity suite is steadily gaining its piece of the pie.

In total, Google has around 25 million Apps users, so education makes up a generous slice of the suite’s userbase. Google has made a strong push to recruit educational institutions to use Google Apps, launching a new centralized site targeted towards recruiting educational institutions. It makes sense; not only is it a huge market for the productivity suite, but schools and colleges are where many people get trained, start relying on, and form brand allegiances to productivity apps.

Some of the new schools that have “Gone Google” are Morehouse, University of Rhode Island, University of Nevada Las Vegas, the Metropolitan State College of Denver and North Carolina State University. And according to the Campus Computing survey, more than 80 percent of schools in the U.S. have moved to cloud computing or are considering it, and of those almost 60 percent choose Google Apps, so these new schools have plenty of company.

But the biggest barrier is actually convincing schools and institutions that moving to the cloud doesn’t mean a sacrifice in privacy, as exhibited by the situation at UC Davis. Of course adding more features and making the suite generally more appealing to consumers will certainly encourage usage, but the real battle is in the cloud. But as cloud computing becomes more widely adopted, Google should see steady adoption of its offering. Clearly, it’s already happening.

One of the virtues of using Google’s products are the connections you get to the search giant’s other applications. For example, I love that my Gmail account can connect to iGoogle, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and other products in the Google family, making the transition between applications seamless and easy. Google is now planning to bring this interconnectivity to Google Apps. 

Google says 9 of the top 20 requests from Apps customers are for their accounts to work with more services from Google. Currently, Apps works with Gmail, Docs, Chat, Groups, Video and Calendar. Later this year, Google will roll out functionality with Apps for Picasa, Google Reader, AdWords, News, Finance, and other products. Users won’t need to switch between their personal and work account to interact with these products from within the Apps interface.

Google says that all “Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers will be moved to the new infrastructure that enables this change in the fall, and customers who would like more control over the timing of this change will be able to make the switch voluntarily during the summer.”

This is a huge bonus for the functionality of Google Apps considering the popularity of the applications that it will be integrating. It certainly ups the ante in the ongoing Microsoft-Google productivity suite wars.

Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps reseller that also helps enterprises migrate to and manage the productivity suite, has raised $1 million in funding from Hallett Capital and other investors. The startup has also brought on a new CEO, Jon Hallet (who was the lead investor in the round) to lead the company. Cloud Sherpas’ founder, Michael Cohn, will become Vice President of Marketing and Product Management.

Cloud Sherpas not only helps companies migrate and transition over to Google Apps but also provides additional tools to make the productivity suite more useful. Currently, over 1,800 organizations use Cloud Sherpas’ products and services.

In December, Google touted a big win for Google’s cloud-based communication and collaboration suite, Google Apps: the City of Los Angeles planned to equip its 34,000 employees with Google Apps. This would replace Novell’s GroupWise system, the e-mail technology provider that LA had previously been using. LA had evaluated 14 e-mail technology providers for a revamp of the city government’s communication and collaboration platform, and ended up picking Google Apps. The deal was reported to be worth $7.2 million. But it hasn’t been a smooth transition for LA to move over from GroupWise to Google Apps; and it appears that the City administrators are questioning the move thanks to productivity, security and slowness issues with Google Apps.