Google intros Apps edition to bypass the IT department

Google is releasing a new edition of its hosted applications suite that end-users
can bring into the workplace without the involvement of their IT department.

It means that IT managers who fret about employees using unauthorized software
at work will have another tool to worry about, especially in industries where
information management is heavily regulated, like health care and finance.

The new release, called Google Apps Team Edition, is due to be available Thursday
for free. It is aimed at employees who are interested in using Google Apps but
whose employers haven't signed up for it, said Rajen Sheth, Google
Apps senior product manager.

Team Edition contains the core communication and collaboration services and
applications from other editions, like the word processor, spreadsheet, Start
page, Talk instant messaging and calendar, but not Gmail, which requires IT
participation to re-route the company's e-mail flow.

So far, more than 500,000 mostly small organizations have signed up for Google
Apps, but the other versions -- Standard, Education, Partner and Premier --
require IT to implement the suite because its services are linked to an organization's
Internet domain.

That changes with the Team Edition, which will let employees set up Google
Apps workgroups as long as they have valid e-mail addresses with their organizations'
domains, Sheth said.

"Google Apps has been, by definition, an IT project, and now we want to
let people use it without IT involvement," Sheth said.

Once signed up with Team Edition, people can see who else in their organization's
Internet domain is also a user, and invite those who aren't, Sheth said.

"It provides a quick way for workgroups to start collaborating,"
he said.

IT departments shouldn't get angry about Team Edition, according to Sheth,
because, unlike other software that employees use without IT approval, it provides
an upgrade path to IT-manageable versions.

"The IT department always has the option to sign up for the Standard Edition
for free if they want to provide control over this," Sheth said. "This
is a solid, happy medium."

Team Edition can also be upgraded to the other editions, like Education, which
is free, and Premier, which costs US$50 per user per year. Although Gmail isn't
part of Team Edition, Google is exploring ways to make it a part, Sheth said.

By its very nature as a Web-hosted software suite, an unmanaged Google Apps
deployment can represent a concern for IT departments, since the applications
and the data generated are stored outside organizations' firewalls in Google
data centers.

However, Team Edition will be far from alone among the hosted software that
employees use in their organizations without getting approval from the IT department,
said Erica Driver, a Forrester Research analyst.

The IT department reactions to Team Edition will depend on the organization's
culture, which range from those in "lockdown mode" to those more tolerant
and aware that Web 2.0 technologies are seeping in from the consumer world to
the workplace, Driver said.

Team Edition, with its bottom-up, end-user-driven focus, fits in with Google's
traditional strategy of appealing to individuals, grown out of its consumer
services, and will likely boost the adoption of Google Apps in companies, government
agencies, educational institutions and other organizations that don't currently
use the suite, said Matt Cain, a Gartner analyst.

"The Google model is to prime the well at the end-user level and assist
IT somewhere along the way, but the demand generation for the suite will definitely
be at the rank-and-file level, not at the IT level," Cain said.

Google needs to make sure it strikes a balance between rallying end-users and
giving IT managers a way to enter the picture and exert control, he said. "Google
will encourage end-user adoption but it can't disintermediate the IT staff,
which will have to ultimately clean up any mess that's created," Cain said.