Q&A: Google exec touts company's fledgling SaaS efforts

Company expects to attract corporate users to Google Apps service, says Glotzbach
BOSTON -- Matthew Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise, said corporate customers still need to become more comfortable with hosted application delivery before it will really take off. Glotzbach sat down with Computerworld during the AIIM International Conference here last week to talk about Google Inc.'s fledgling Google Apps software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering and how the company plans to compete with traditional application vendors like Oracle Corp. and SAP AG and with new hosted offerings from top vendors like Microsoft Corp.
Are corporate IT managers customers ready to trust hosted products with their data? We have tens of millions and hundreds of millions of users who trust us with their data, be it search history, Gmail or credit card information. It's easy to believe that our systems for managing and storing data are going to be as secure, or in most cases, more secure than your average enterprise system. It's really more of an emotional argument than anything else. This cloud is an intimidating and somewhat abstract idea. We're quickly dispelling this myth that these cloud-based or services-based applications are somehow lightweight versions of traditional apps. Because these apps are connected up in the cloud, they facilitate a collaboration and sharing that is nearly impossible for traditional apps.
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