This post was written by Mulah Johnson
Signing up to Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) is simple but integrating it into your corporate computing environment is less so. One of the major drawbacks to Google Docs has to be that you need an internet connection, and a reasonably fast one at that, in order to do anything. If your requirements are relatively rudimentary then Google Apps could be right for your company – but if not – there are other, far better, solutions out there.


Despite recent outages at online retailer Amazon.com, technology experts feel that the outlook for cloud computing is bright. Google executive, Rishi Chandra, said that the company is going after enterprise business in part because organizations are ready to embrace cloud computing. The reliability of services such as Gmail and ubiquitous access to broadband Internet have led to the rising interest in cloud computing, Chandra added. Gmail, Google’s free Web-based e-mail service, is a basic example of cloud computing. In Gmail, users access the application and data via the Web rather than from a local e-mail server and messages are saved in the cloud, so to speak, and not on a user’s laptop or desktop PC. However, one of the biggest hurdles that the technology must overcome is enabling users to access data and applications when the Internet is not available. To address this issue, Google has recently begun to offer off-line versions of its Google Apps.
Google has launched Google Site Search™, a service that provides quality search to any website with the flexibility of cloud computing. The new service allows site owners to quickly implement search functionality that is familiar and useful to their visitors. At the same time, site owners can customize Google Site Search to account for the unique nature of their site and their content. Google Site Search offers: