It’s no secret that Google has ambitions of becoming an Enterprise productivity suite powerhouse; perhaps one day taking over the top spot from Microsoft. As Google’s President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora told us at TechCrunch Disrupt a last week, Google hopes for Apps to be a billion dollar revenue stream in three to four years.
But one challenge has been convincing businesses that a move to the cloud promises security. And some early Apps users have even questioned the security of the suite, which includes e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications. To mitigate these concerns, Google has released a white paper to give enterprise customers greater transparency into Google’s security practices, policies, and technology involving Google Apps. And of course, the white paper is also intended to also assure current and potential clients of its “strong and extensive security infrastructure.” Google has even created a special portal about privacy and security for the educational institutions that use Apps.
The white paper, which is embedded here, outlines Google’s corporate security policy, and then how Apps includes information security, physical security and operational security. The paper appears to be intended for IT professionals to dissect; as the average non-technical person wouldn’t understand most of what’s included in the 14-page document.
While Google may face some scrutiny over security in the cloud now, it seems likely that the cloud will be the future of enterprise applications. Google’s made a solid bet on cloud applications and even Microsoft has followed suit. As Google steadily builds out its enterprise products with innovative features, such as an Apps marketplace and an App Engine for businesses; businesses will start to migrate. And white papers like these will certainly help ease the transition in some way.