Google revs up 'cloud' goodies for Indian enterprise space

Google, the $29-billion search engine giant, garners negligible revenue from the enterprise space, compared to its phenomenal success with web advertising, which accounts for almost 96 per cent of its total revenue.

With Google Apps for business users, Doug Farber, enterprise managing director (Asia Pacific), hopes to gradually alter the scenario. One of the first recruits of Salesforce — Google’s major competitor in the ‘cloud’ business —before joining Google, he’s cajoling businesses to offload their information technology-related work onto the cloud platform (using files and applications over the internet).

Farber claims to have achieved much success in this space. “We have around 100,000 users in India, around 500,000 in the Asia-Pacific region and over two million globally,” he asserts. Prominent clients include the Indian Youth Congress (around 28,000 users), India Infoline (around 17,000 users) and Punj Lloyd (around 24,000 users).

Globally, Google charges its clients around $50 per month, per head (also referred to as a licence). While the price is similar in India, sources say there are many resellers who offer discounts and hence, make the proposition more attractive for enterprises.

When asked about Google's 'Chromebook' strategy, Farber said, “While it's a bit early to comment, we plan to do that. There have been many inquiries from business process outsourcing, hotel chains and banks. For instance, Chromebook is a device which can simply be used in the morning shift and handed over to a person in the following shift. There's no reason it would add to a company's hardware and software costs. Why do companies need so much bloatware?”In the US, Google charges customers around $30 per month, per head (maintenance costs included). The pricing in India would be similar, though Farber declined to comment on that.

“Our enterprise offerings make a lot of sense, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Why, for instance, would a start-up want to pay around $30,000 for an email server, besides the related information technology maintenance costs? SMBs have limited resources. We help them save costs so that they can concentrate on developing their businesses,” said Farber.

Cloud computing, according to Farber, “is the next big trend in the IT industry, setting to redefine ways, and Asia Pacific has a high potential for growth in the cloud computing market”. IDC values this industry in the Asian-Pacific region (excluding Japan) at about $1.3 billion in 2010, and is expected to expand by about 40 per cent per year until 2014. In this region, Japan has accepted it the quickest, becoming the second-largest IT market in the world, poised to grow to $29.2 billion by 2015.

“Asia-Pacific remains different in many ways from the rest of the world, and the course of future cloud development will differ in a manner defined by the limits of budget, bandwidth, and local legislation. But one key trend among Asian businesses, driving the conversion to the cloud, is the pressure to reduce capital expenditures, and many would opt for more innovative but cost-effective solutions to the various enterprise needs,” said Farber.

Google, however, is not the lone player in the market. Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Salesforce are well-entrenched players. Microsoft has launched services like Office 365 that unify Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online onto a cloud platform.