Google is considering offering its high capacity Gmail
e-mail service as a complete hosted enterprise
solution.
Google is planning to offer Gmail as a back-end service and
provide all necessary hardware and software. Each enterprise
end-user would get 2Gbytes of storage space, the same as consumer
users of Gmail currently get.
This is far more than most enterprise users get from their IT
department, when using established e-mail systems built around
Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, for instance.
The beta service is called “Gmail for your domain” and provides
organisations with a control panel to allow them to administer and
manage user accounts. San Jose City College in California is
already testing the new service with about 10,000
students. Gmail was first launched to consumers in April 2004.
Google has so far not announced any commercial roll-out date for
the enterprise Gmail service, or indicated how much it would
cost. The consumer service is free but Google has carefully
controlled the number of people being allowed to use it.
Google already offers companies internal data search
appliances.