BigShinyThing

Google has announced a souped-up version of online application suite Google Apps. The (un)creatively named ‘Premier’ edition offers enhanced functionality, more online storage, phone support and a bunch of other corporate-friendly features. All with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, for a flat USD50/person/year. Not just a tempting offer for small businesses who want to avoid spend on IT infrastructure — Google has already signed up Procter and Gamble and General Electric as flagship clients.

Sounds like value to us — importantly Google have also published programming interfaces for their office suite, so that third-party developers (or switched-on corporate IT departments who see which way the wind is turning and want to continue to justify their salaries) can enhance and tweak functionality. All that virtual team collaboration stuff? Already in place. Blackberry integration? Soon, probably. Yawn, then take a deep breath: next comes the modern bit.

Google Apps is the first mainstream system to give business users tools which really begin to acknowledge the cloud, tools which aspire to the benefits of those long-used by Linux hackers and wikipedians; tools with which to engage and work with strangers or competitors for mutual advantage. They aren’t there yet — Google’s initial focus is to get some traction in the mundane worlds of word-processing and data-crunching — but the trajectory is easy to plot: on- and up-wards into business-focussed social media. The challenge is to reshape — or re-create — traditional business processes into a form where they can really profit from such tools.

Companies find it difficult enough to move from Flash-heavy websites crammed with stale corporate nonsense, to actual conversation with their audience. It will be much harder for most to find a path on which they can make their borders more porous, their processes more diffuse, their knowledge more open, and yet still have an edge. But adoption of tools like Google Apps — even in their current early form — might serve to redirect people’s attention up from their desks, out through their screens, and into the cloud where the world is. It’s a start. Wait and see.