Google, the fastest-growing company in the history of the world, announced late in 2006 that it was inviting subscribers to register for a personal domain at a flat $10 per year. Whilst it’s not uncommon to find an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that will provide you with a domain for $10, with Google you get much, much more. Infact, the Google offer represents a virtualized data center built for one.
And what do you get for your money?
For starters you get a web-site hosting, web-based IT infrastructure, a personalised portal and intranet, an email service, instant messaging, calendar and scheduling software, web-site design software; and, by utilizing some of the other free Google services you can also obtain web-site analytics, word processor and spreadsheet software along with all the necessary storage, data backups, security and maintenance you would expect from a corporate service provider. And this is no pipe dream. At the time of writing, Google has a market capitalization of $138 billion. The founders, Larry and Sergey, are worth more than $10 billion each.
'Corporate-ready' products like Encanvas that bring the 'mash-up' world of light-weight applications development to the door of corporations, provide a new kind of 'software glue' that turns Google's vision of a virtualized service-led computing platform into a reality for risk-averse corporate buyers.
If the future of business IT is a Google subscription at $10 per person for ‘all that you need’, there will be a whole bunch of software companies in ERP and CRM world wondering what the future holds for them. But then, they've had it good for a long time haven't they?
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