Google's deal with Postini is a useful lens through which to see where Google plans to go in the future. Large enterprise customers have always been concerned about incorporating Google Apps because of security issues, but now that Google has begun addressing this problem by acquiring Postini, an e-mail filtering company that developed compliance technology that enforces a company's communications policies, Google has attended to some of these concerns as they take Google Apps to the big business market.

A great place for Google to start is Postini's current customer base of 35,000 customers and 10 million users. "Basically this is [Google] throwing the gauntlet down to Microsoft and saying 'we intend to compete with you in your core market,'" said Shar Van-Boskirk, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And if that's the case we will see Google compete with Microsoft's broader set of back office applications."

Google's Apps like Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheets provide a collaborative work environment that Microsoft currently provides in Exchange, SharePoint and Office for a much larger price. But the thought of risking confidential information in the hands of an external service provider like Google isn't a risk many businesspeople are willing to take. Most large business IT directors still believe that, no matter how secure they say their system is, outsourcing it to a third party opens their data up to to a security compromise.(read more)