Google's Wave communication and collaboration platform is getting early interest from enterprise application vendors like Salesforce.com and SAP.

Both companies have built prototype applications using Wave, which is currently in preview mode for about 100,000 users, after being available only to developers. Wave combines a range of technologies such as document sharing and instant messaging into a system for real-time collaboration.

SAP Research and the vendor's NetWeaver development team created an application called Gravity using Wave. In a demonstration video, Gravity is used to develop process models for a hypothetical merger between an insurance company and a bank. Once completed, the process models are exported into SAP's BPM (business process modeling) software for further refinement.

Meanwhile, Salesforce.com created an extension that employs Wave for customer service. A demonstration video shows how a customer in need of support can use Wave to start a dialogue with an automated support robot. The system also creates a case record in Salesforce.com. If the robot can't answer the user's questions, the user can request a live representative, who joins the conversation.

But while Wave is an intriguing technology, at this point it doesn't quite meet the needs of enterprises, according to Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady.Google is mulling the prospect of a "monetisable wave extension store," according to an official blogpost, through which these applications and others could conceivably be sold.

"For both ISVs and enterprises, the usability will have to be improved," he said. "It's still an intimidatingly new technology for less technical users, so Google would do well to work with potential partners to abstract needless complexity and exposing only the business functionality required."

Google acknowledged that Wave remains a work in progress in an official blog post this week, saying it "isn't quite ready for prime time" and noting that key features, such as a draft mode, remain to be implemented.

After a limited teaser release earlier this year, Google has officially kicked out its Apps Script functionality for enterprise users.

The script enables the automation of a variety of features in Google Apps, such as reading and changing values in Google Spreadsheets, creating Google Calendar appointments, and sending e-mail.

Big G sounds pretty excited about the the whole thing:

"Back in May we announced a pilot release of Google Apps Script, and after thousands of hours of use, and lots of valuable feedback, we're excited to launch Google Apps Script to all Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers today," writes Evin Levey, Google Apps products manager.

Check out the overview video (which came along with the teaser) for a detailed explanation:

Essentially, the script streamlines a bunch of stuff and saves a bunch of time. Levey’s example cites a “bureaucracy-busting Expense Approval Script” which allows:

• automatically converting foreign currency amounts to local currency
• looking up historical exchange rates from external web services
• catching basic errors – things like missing dates, descriptions, and amounts
• triggering business logic to flag certain expense categories 'For Review'

"Even more useful, the script can figure out whose approvals are needed and automatically request approval from those people," he added. "And once approved, the script sends a note to the finance department for payment — all without writing a single e-mail."

Premier and Education Edition users will find the scripts functionality through the Tools menu in the Spreadsheets application.

So, just what the heck is Google Apps?

Is it a collection of slick tools that appeal to users, but fall a little short for rigorous enterprise use? Or is it an engaging set of services that not only enables, but encourages employees to collaborate in a variety of contexts?

The answer is probably a little of both.

In a Burton Group report on the potential of Google Apps in the enterprise, published last April, author Guy Creese notes that it isn’t clear whether Apps is intended primarily for collaboration, content management or communication. While it contains elements of all three, says Creese, none of its features are robust enough to make Apps a replacement for products typically used by enterprises.

For instance, while the premier edition of Apps supports archiving and management of e-mail, thanks to Google’s purchase of e-mail security specialist Postini in 2007, there is no built-in functionality for archiving and managing documents such as spreadsheets, a key requirement for companies concerned about compliance requirements or potential litigation. The absence of such functionality might be a deal-breaker for companies hoping to employ Apps for content management, says Creese. While he praises Apps’ clean and easy-to-use interface, he believes these kinds of functionality gaps show Google is still grappling with producing solutions that satisfy enterprise needs.

Yet the typical enterprise user cares more about ease of use than a long list of features, says Rishi Chandra, Google Apps product manager. “If you ask users the difference between an enterprise content management system, a collaboration system and a productivity suite, they probably wouldn’t care. They just want to be able to do their jobs better.”

That’s what Apps enables, says Chandra. He cites features such as e-mail with embedded calendaring and instant messaging and Sites, which allows users to upload any content type, including Excel spreadsheets and PDF files, to a Web site. “Workers today need to collaborate via a whole host of content types. We want to make that as easy as possible and include search capabilities to make it easy for them to find the information they need.”

“It’s the whole concept of providing ‘good enough’ applications vs. the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ you get with (Microsoft’s) Office and other productivity suites,” says Mark Koenig, a vice president of Saugatuck Technology. “Why pay for all those features if 80 or 90 percent of them aren’t used? That’s a real value proposition: Why are you paying for the other stuff, or why are you paying for stuff for everybody in the organization when there are only a few power users that need it?”

If it's good enough at home ...

Google’s consumer roots are a strength, says Chandra. “We’re able to roll out services to millions of users in the consumer space, test them out, make sure they are beneficial to end users and then roll them out to the enterprise, adding the security and reliability that companies need.”

Creese, however, sees them as a liability. From his report: “Google hands consumer-oriented applications to the enterprise division with instructions to make them work for corporations. This ‘hand-me-down’ approach leads to suboptimal design from an enterprise point of view, and to a lot of rework. Only if and when the enterprise division stands architecturally on its own will Google be able to compete head-to-head with competitors who have focused on the enterprise from the beginning.”

Google’s “constant stream of innovation” yields frequent incremental updates such as the recent addition of Google Analytics to Apps, which allows companies to gauge the popularity and usage patterns of documents, says Chandra. Google recognizes it needs to keep systems administrators better notified of additions and changes to Apps and is working on methods to do so. For instance, it launched an RSS feed in October.

While Google's rapid iteration model allows the product to morph quickly, Creese points out it can also delay features if customers didn't ask for them initially. Also, he says, companies like to know which new features are in the pipeline so they can tweak their processes to take advantage of them.

Cloud computing and Google Apps implementation software and services, Salvair, has made available its Version 2 software for Google Docs Archival and eDiscovery.

The latest release of the software allows customers more flexibility in how they archive documents, and has dramatic performance improvements for archives and for document restoration using the "un-delete" functionality of the product.

Tom Cooper, the company Founder explained, "The newest release provides the ability to backup Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and PDFs in a very rapid fashion. We have improved the eDiscovery capabilities within the archive, and we have allowed full domain or per user backup capabilities in the product." This flexibility gives companies the option of archiving Google Docs for an entire domain, or for select subset of users within a domain.

Salvair also announced a program for EDU and non-profit companies to take advantage of the Google Docs Archival and eDiscovery Product at significantly reduced prices.

Mr. Cooper added, "We are focused exclusively on cloud computing and extending its benefits to a wide audience. In many cases educational and non-profit organizations have the same back office requirements as large corporations, without the commensurate budgets. We want to help every user who wishes to use Google Apps as their messaging and collaboration platform."

Salvair specializes in mid-market and enterprise level Google Apps implementation assistance, starting with its software portfolio including SSO for Google Apps, a Google Docs Upload product,IMAP server-side migration for any IMAP-enabled server, and self-service migration products for PST and NSF upload by end users. More products are in development, such as a Google Sites Archival and eDiscovery product.

So I'm having one of those recurring teacher nightmares. Not the one about a class I can't control on the first day of school, or the one where there's something hanging out of my nose while I'm speaking to the students. This is the one I have about being out of town for a workshop while the kids take complete advantage of the substitute teacher and get nothing done all day.

Except this time it isn't a nightmare. It's really happening. I'm taking a break between workshop sessions, opening up my laptop in a quiet room on the 25th floor of a building in downtown Oakland, California, when the problem begins. The first email dribbles in. It's from the sub, who can't find my plans and isn't sure what the kids are supposed to be working on. She's thinking about getting a movie from the library to show classes all day, but she isn't even sure what we're studying. And the students have apparently convinced her that they're allowed to get on the classroom laptops and surf the web whenever there's free time (yeah, right!). I'm freaking out because things are unraveling faster than a bad wig at a retirement home. My cell phone battery is running low, my email is inexplicably blocked from sending, and soon I'll be stuck in a workshop session for another two hours before the next break. 

All I can think about is the hour I spent planning a cool class podcasting activity, and the mess – probably both figuratively and literally – that I will have to clean up the next day. Just as I'm thinking for the millionth time that I should simply never be out of the classroom, Google Docs & Spreadsheets saves the day. A second email makes it through, and this time it's from one of my students. She's asked me to collaborate on a Google document! Instead of a nightmare, I have a dream: the opportunity to check in and collaborate with my students from afar. I immediately accept the invitation, and within ten minutes all of my students are connected with me and working productively on research and script writing for their podcasts. 

Okay, so I can get a little dramatic. The great thing about Google Docs & Spreadsheets is that it really is a dream for educators of every stripe. Since I was first introduced to the software at the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View this past November, it has changed my classroom more than any other software I've used. It's not just that we've switched the application we use to write papers – we've fundamentally altered the way we communicate, create, and collaborate. Perhaps the best testimony to the power of this software to get kids excited and involved in projects is the fact that, based on my results, my colleagues at Miller Creek Middle School are introducing it to their classes as well. You could say that Google Docs & Spreadsheets is transforming the way we teach one classroom at a time. And I can't imagine that the same thing wouldn't happen at a library – or anywhere else that learning and collaboration takes place.

Communication  
Take, for instance, the dramatic impact it's had on the way I communicate as a teacher. No longer am I shuffling through copies of old papers with illegible comments on them to piece together a cohesive picture of a student's progress. Instead, I'm able to pull up multiple writing samples with just a few mouse clicks, and to review a student's revisions as well as the final product. This has been an invaluable teaching tool because my discussions with students about their writing are more clear, timely, and content-driven. And I can have the same kind of discussions with their parents. At this year's parent-teacher conferences, I repeatedly pulled up documents to illustrate points I wanted to make about the strengths and weaknesses of a student's writing. It enriched these conversations so much that more than one parent asked me where they could get Google Docs & Spreadsheets for their own personal use or for their college student. I can envision the same kind of success in a library context – why not keep staff meeting agendas in Docs & Spreadsheets, where participants can read them at their leisure, add their own agenda items, and insert comments or questions leading up to the meeting? You could print the most current version or take your laptop to the meeting and display it on a projector so everyone can follow along.

Creativity
Google Docs & Spreadsheets has also had an impact on the way my students create a new piece of writing – whether it's an essay, podcast script, blog post, or research paper. Before I introduced my students to the software, they expected to write in relative isolation, to submit a paper only I would see, and get it back marked with a simple score and perhaps a few corrections and comments. Now, the energy is completely different from the very beginning. Students can easily collaborate with one another – and with me – at any stage in the writing process, and the expectation is that the document will transform over time. The ability to incorporate collective brainstorming, peer editing, and continuous feedback makes the process dynamic and ever-changing, which inherently raises the level of expectation and achievement. You still have the familiar editing tool bar and spell check functions, but there's freshness and excitement when students are able to work on the same piece from any computer, compare revisions, view the history of a document, read and react to inserted comments, and publish the final piece directly on the web.

If your job as a librarian includes helping students with group research projects, you might consider showing them how to use Docs & Spreadsheets to brainstorm topics, share information, and pool resources. All of their library research will automatically be saved in their own accounts and accessible via any computer, so there's no need for you to worry about keeping the hard drives of your library's computers free of student clutter.

Collaboration
Perhaps the most satisfying piece of the Docs & Spreadsheets pie is the limitless opportunity for collaboration. The software doesn't just "support" collaboration, it screams out for you to collaborate with a click of the "Collaborate" tab. And when you collaborate over the Internet, the world opens up and the walls of the classroom fall away. My students often work on group projects outside of class, and they can easily "get together" without leaving their homes. But the possibilities don't end there. One afternoon I was working late, and I logged in to my account to work on a lesson plan for the next day. I noticed one of my students working on a challenging research paper, and since she'd asked me to collaborate, I jumped on to take a look at her progress. To my surprise and delight, I wasn't the only one collaborating. One of my other students was online offering her suggestions for improvement, as was the student's older sister – logging in from a university on the other side of the country!

It doesn't take a wild stretch of the imagination to picture collaborations among groups of students at different grade-levels or living in different countries. And in the library, this kind of collaboration could help students think more deeply about how they find and evaluate information. For instance, you could start a collaborative project in which the library staff and students at your school work together to produce a guide to library and Internet research. Not only would you gain insight into your patrons' research blind spots, you'd also be giving them an opportunity to learn the best research techniques directly from the experts.

Tips and Tricks
I've spent a lot of time poking around in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but I remember what it was like when I first got started. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of Docs & Spreadsheets. Enjoy.

Tips for first-timers

1. Don't be shy – jump in and go for it. You'll find the tool bar, spell-check, and other elements of the word-processing software very familiar, but with a huge advantage over traditional applications. Your documents will be saved automatically about every 20 seconds or so. As long as you have access to a computer connected to the Internet, you have access to the document. It's saved online so you don't have to think about file space, file names, folders, or anything else that could come between you and the document.
2. Change the name of your document any time you like. Once a document is saved, it's easy to change the name. Just click on the title and type in the new name.
3. You must collaborate! Don't hesitate to share your document with others right from the beginning – this is the heart of the application. Simply click on the "Collaborate" tab and follow the prompt to type in the email addresses of your chosen collaborators. Then watch as your collaborators join in. Everyone can work on the same document simultaneously, in real time. You can choose to accept their edits or stick with your original version – everything is saved in "Revisions."
4. When you're ready to print, don't forget to use the "Print" button in the Docs & Spreadsheets menu (not the "print" function in your browser).

Tips for veteran users

1. Don't overlook every editor's best friend: the comment. You can click on the "Insert" tab to insert a comment with the click of your mouse. The comment box appears and lets your collaborators know who has commented and when. I recommend placing your comment at the end of a paragraph, so you won't disrupt the layout or interrupt the flow of the writing.
2. Check out the "Revisions" section and explore all you can do there. You can review earlier drafts of a document and compare two versions. If you're using Docs & Spreadsheets in a classroom or research seminar, this lets you easily see the changes students have made based on your comments – no more searching around to find out if they actually listened to you.
3. Use "Tags" to organize your documents. Once you've saved your document, it goes into the "active" document list. From there you can tag the document to file it. My wish list for the next version of Google Docs & Spreadsheets includes adding a familiar filing system of folders for tagged documents, but in the interim the tags alone are useful.
4. Publish your documents on the web with the "Publish" tab. You can choose to point to your document on your blog or website – just use the unique URL. It's an easy way to share your document with larger groups of people or the general public.
5. If you're a Google Earth fan, you can introduce students to it by having them research an area of the world, then use Docs & Spreadsheets to collaborate on text for "placemarks" that everyone can view.

Last week brought us news regarding Google’s future plans for their online application suite. At the Web 2.0 Expo CEO Eric Schmidt said Google will release a PowerPoint-type presentation application, slated for this summer. Then, VP Douglas Merrill announced on the official Google blog that the company has acquired videoconferencing software from a Swedish startup.

What else is in the works? Phil Sim of Squash makes some guesses after his participation in a survey of Google Apps Premier users. In that survey, Google explored his interest in a variety of applications. Beyond the basics already included in the suite, Google asked about project and contact management, file storage, and online discussion groups, suggesting they are thinking of incorporating these into their suite.

Combining this information, we can make some guesses at what you might find in Google Apps in the future.

1. Presentation. Through their acquisition of Tonic Systems, Google will offer an alternative to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, as well as to the many web-based presentation systems under development. That category includes SlideShare,Zoho Show, Thumbstacks, and Spresent.

2. Project management. Watch out, 37Signals: the survey Phil completed suggests that project management is on Google’s to do list, something that would likely compete directly with 37Signals’ popular Basecamp service.

3. Contact management. Gmail’s automatic creation of contacts from emails works really nicely. If you use Google Apps for your Domain, you can already share contacts across users. It’d be great to also see some Highrise-like capabilities — taking notes, tracking interactions, and managing tasks related to people you’re working with.

4. File storage and sharing. We regularly cover online file storage and sharing apps here at Web Worker Daily because it’s a core step in managing your online work. Google Blogoscoped ponders how it might look and work.

5. Online discussion groups. Google Groups already exists but it’s not tied into Google Apps. I’d like to see a unification under the Google Reader interface where you could browse your mail, RSS feeds, and relevant discussion groups all in one quick keyboard-accessible screen.

6. Wiki. Google acquired JotSpot on Halloween of 2006 and immediately closed it to new sign-ups. News has been sparse, but in January the JotSpot developers announced an upgrade for existing customers and said it will be the last version produced before migration to Google’s infrastructure. Perhaps Google will combine project management with the JotSpot wiki capabilities — wikis provide a reasonable alternative to dedicated project management apps for some teams.

7. Video chat. Google announced its acquisition of Swedish start-up Marratech’s video conferencing software, suggesting that they intend to use it internally only. No one would be surprised if Google incorporated it into the Google Talk client to support video chat, though.

8. Web meetings. Marratech offers capabilities beyond videoconferencing to include e-meetings and collaborative whiteboards along the lines of what WebEx is known for. Here’s hoping if they do offer web-based real-time meetings that it works better than WebEx.

Google today unveiled the enterprise version of Google Apps, a set of communication and collaboration tools that provide an alternative to Microsoft Office for companies that are willing to sacrifice functionality for cost savings.

Available for $50 per user, per year, Google Apps Premier Edition includes such upgrades as integration with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, support for Gmail on BlackBerry mobile devices, 10GB of e-mail storage per user, round-the-clock phone support and service-level agreements promising 99.9% uptime. Advertising is turned off in the upgraded version unless businesses want the ads to remain.

Driver calls Google Apps Premier Edition a “direct shot at Microsoft Office,” even though she says that was not Google’s intent. Although the functionality of Google Apps is less advanced than that of Office, the Google tool is extremely easy to use and will force Microsoft to improve its own product, she says.“The main reason someone would buy it is because it’s cheap,” says Erica Driver, a principal analyst at Forrester Research “It’s $50 per user, per year, far less than Microsoft Office.”

Google is taking its expertise in the consumer realm and attempting to transfer it to the enterprise in a software-as-a-service package, says Rajen Sheth, the Google Apps product manager.Today’s release builds on Google Apps, a free service launched in beta in August 2006 that includes e-mail, instant messaging, a calendar tool and Web page creator. The free versions of Google Apps are used by more than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of universities.

“We’re seeing this consumerization of IT effect going on where we see consumer technologies starting to make their way into the enterprise world,” Sheth says. “From our perspective, it suits us well.”

Google Apps Premier Edition includes a personalized start page combining private, corporate and public information into one interface. For example, users' start pages might include e-mail, calendar items, their organizations' customer accounts, and public information, such as news, weather and stock prices. The premier edition includes APIs that let users connect to a variety of data feeds, Sheth says.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets will let people collaborate when building and changing documents. When someone makes a change, it can be seen in real time by others working on the document, and each version of the document is saved. This provides a more secure environment for collaborating than an e-mail thread in which a document is sent back and forth and easily could be forwarded out of the company, Google officials say.

“In many ways it’s like a wiki,” Sheth says. “You’re able to see all the changes that have been made. Lastly, you can choose who can edit it and who can view it.”

Early adopters of Google Apps Premier Edition include Salesforce.com, Chicago real estate agency Prudential Preferred Properties and SF Bay Pediatrics in San Francisco.

The pediatrics practice began using Google Apps in late December, and the doctors learned how to use the program quickly, says Andrew Johnson, CIO at SF Bay Pediatrics.