Gmail and Google Apps make it easy to move from MSFT Exchange and Outlook

Google is serious about enterprise software. Today Google announced  Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange which allows easy migration of your company's email, calendar and contact data to Google Apps. Last week Google announced the Google Apps Marketplace, where software companies can sell their enterprise applications directly to Google’s customers.  Google also announced that 25 million users and 2 million businesses are now using Google Apps. Want to continue using the Outlook client while taking advantage of Google’s backend servers? Then use Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Need to support Blackberry or migrate from Lotus Notes? Try BlackBerry enterprise server, or the migration tool for IBM’s Lotus Notes.

Ben Lorica at O’Reilly reports that there are about 1,500 business applications on the Google Apps Marketplace. Ben put together this chart that summarizes the number of applications in each category, and a split between enterprise apps and search related apps.

The Google Apps Marketplace provides one stop shopping for the two million businesses that Google Apps. App stores have been around for a long time, but usually focused on free or low cost consumer apps for cell phones. The Google Apps Marketplace is focused on business applications.

For software developers, it provides an easy way to market their products to millions of customers that represent 25 million end users. Building a vibrant ecosystem on a business platform is all about developers. Giving developers an easy way to sell their products to millions of customers is a big plus. Making it easy to integrate, providing rich APIs, and developer support are essential. This is my new job at Google.

The Google Apps Developers Team at Google is here to help developers from any size company build great new applications. Email me if you have an application for the Google Apps Marketplace, or if you need help getting started.

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