Google apps for $50

Google, in the first direct assault on the money making machine of Microsoft (its Office line of products), has launched a line of key business applications for money. Titled the 'Google Apps Premier Edition', it provides some key office productivity tools such as a Word processor, a spreadsheet application, Google Talk (messaging), Calendar, Gmail. These are wrapped in a promise of support with IT management tools, technical support, and service level agreements for uptime, costing a total of $50.
In addition, it will offer a platform for integrating with third parties such that it can become integrated with a client's other business applications. This is a big step ahead in the area of hosted applications or Software as a service. The service will provide 10GB of storage per user, 24X7 support for critical issues, and 99.9% service uptime.
This will be very advantageous for those customers who are currently struggling with the expenses of Microsoft office, and this provides a very low cost alternative. In addition, with more integration with other business applications such as ERP, sales, etc., companies will start to see this as a feasible alternative. Plus, features such as being able to easily share documents across users (a big feature of the word processor and spreadsheet application) can be a major advantage.
However, there are some critical issues that need to be overcome. This is a hosted solution, and will be unavailable if connectivity is unavailable. In addition, office applications by Microsoft are seen so firmly as desktop products that it will require a major shift in thinking to see them as hosted applications. And Microsoft is not going to be staying still, they will also take steps to try to overcome this challenge from Google.