On 28 August 2006, Google confirmed yet another rumor as it took the wraps off "Google Applications for Your Domain," an advertising-supported set of tools (such as e-mail, calendaring, voice over IP and Web page authoring) aimed at small firms (see "Enterprise Applications Offer a Glimpse of Google's Ambitions" for the facts and our analysis).

Well, you and I need to get more partisan and do it fast. How long will it be before services like this — from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and others — get rich enough for your CEO to start questioning why you're spending $50,000, $100,000 or $10 million a year on something you could get for free if only people would accept some advertising in the right-hand margin.

Is what we provide to our employees that special that when push comes to shove, you would rather see your firm lay off people instead of using free "Office from the Internet" services?

Have you gotten those calls yet, maybe from the CFO if not the CEO? How long do you think it's going to be before there are stories in first-class, in-flight magazines touting the real savings and, in some cases, the improved accessibility (from anywhere via any device)?

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The reference to 'accepting some advertising in the margin' is distracting from the main point. Nobody cares about a few ads in the margin – we all use Google Search on that basis today. The fear factor is control – especially over fitness for business purpose. e.g. can Google assure me that the company email is being stored on servers in an EU country or in a country with a safe harbor agreement? Otherwise I would breech European data protection law – since emails and calendar entries regularly contain personal information and discuss individuals.

Any company considering experimentation with such "free" office tools will need to consider both it's own competitive position and its responsibilities for user behaviour with some care before making a commitment. If you operate in a consumer focused market, there is every possibility it could be your competitor's advertising appearing on your users' screens. Or maybe it will be an offer of alternative employment. Some organizations may object to such advertising in principle and all should be concerned if their screens can be seen by customers or other visitors to the workplace. We may accept this kind of advertising from web search engines, but embedding it into standard productivity tools is a big step beyond that.

Some advertisments could impact user productivity and concentration by providing an online "retail" distraction at inopportune moments. There may even be the need for a reconsideration of enterprise responsibilities in case users are exposed to advertisments they regard as offensive or make a poor decision based on information displayed to them in the workplace. These risks may sound far flung today, but this is new ground and some areas will initially be open to interpretation. What is clear is that this should NOT be decsion based only on acqusition cost - just like TCO, it’s the stuff you can't see that has the biggest impact in the long term.

There often seems to be a natural chasm between the needs of small businesses and large enterprises - in many cases no need for a Maginot line. For years, many small business have kept their books with Intuit's Quickbooks, yet few large companies seem to do so. Many consumers do their taxes at Quicken.com, yet very few companies do so. Most of the new technologies (like the Internet and laptops and wireless) that has been brought into enterprises over the objection of IT staffs has actually come into large companies first, then smaller companies later.

From the security perspective, the continual loss of sensitive customer data in databases, documents and spreadsheets has finally brought companies to the point where they have to deploy controls to protect that data on their own systems - that though of moving to having that data stored at services that are driven by the needs of advertisers makes that chasm look even wider. Companies who outsource data storage are forced by their auditors to look for evidence of SAS 70 service provider audits and additional assurance of the safe handling of corporate data that is often driven by various regulations. Having financial data stored at shopco.spreadsheet.com is an Evel Kneivel scale chasmic leap.

The irony is free blogging sites and tools will actually risk more jobs that are based on Paid opinion/research model in the next 5 years,(Financial investment, IT Opinions, Consumer reports, journalism) than free software that has inferior capabilities with higher risk will risk FTE vs IT budget decisions.

If anything makes the in-flight magazines it's not going to be how much your company can save by using free software-as-a-service. It's going to be how much you could lose because of scandals like this: http://www.techcrunch.com/2...

I don't think the media will be kind to Google, Yahoo, etc. in this endeavor.

I'm surprised by the myopic tone of this article and a lot of the comments. I work in IT for a very large, very public enterprise and I can assure you that it's not a question of "if" it's a question of when. And it's silly to assume this will mean layoffs -- what it should mean is a reallocation of resources wasting time on commodity IT to things that are more core to the enterprise's competitive advantage.

About 1980 I predicted a highly distributed application environment by the end of the 20th century. That of course exists today in the form of Internet applications. How these applications are deployed seems to be central to this discussion. Whether they are deployed is almost secondary.

Even commerical commodity application such as Quicken are will use the Internet as a distribution channel, as it is so attractive to vendors.
No more 'patch' or 'build' upgrades. We are already seeing the early indications with things such as <your vendor name here> Update.

As more applications are so distributed, the line between the 'enterprise' application and the 'commodity' application will blur significantly. We can reasonably confidently predict a change in the way in which applications are built, and a concommitant change in the way in which IT views and vendors sell, applications and services. Everything changes, from pricing to licensing to distribution itself. This is only the tip of the virtual iceberg.

Guidance extends to understanding and embracing this new model rather than attempting to reject it out-of-hand as too revolutionary or extreme.