What is Google Up To?

Six years ago, Google Search Appliance (GSA) was introduced with a price less than $2,500.

The number of GSA sold has not been disclosed but is estimated in the range from 20,000 to as many as 60,000 units.

Enterprise users want something that “works just like Google.”

GSA is now complemented by a wider range of Google components.

Each component has search DNA, but those complements add important capabilities to Google’s enterprise search lineup.

Google has rolled-out Google Commerce Search (GCS). The GCS focuses on the retail side of a company’s business.

Take a look at http://www.google.com/commercesearch/#utm_source=en-ha-na-us-commerce-skws&utm_medium=ha&utm_campaign=commerce-skws .

For $50,000 a year—a price that varies by number of stocking units or items for sale—one could get a cloud-based e-commerce system (separate from GSA).

The benefits of the product include seamless scaling to handle peak traffic, special product promotion functions, and advanced reporting and analysis, among others.

Like Google’s industrial strength e-mail service, built on Gmail and the Postini systems, GCS is a cloud play.

Moreover, Google has been steadily publishing a number of integration and application programming interface (API) activity.

On the integration front, Google continues to add partners.

Among the partners available to assist organizations are Appirio, Atlassian and Manymoon.

A full lineup of partners is available at http://code.google.com/googleapps/campfire.html.

The APIs themselves now number in the hundreds, but a comprehensive list is lacking.

For the enterprise sector, there is a secure data connector, a provisioning API, a code block to implement a single sign-on and an e-mail migration API.

There are three ways to keep track of Google’s APIs. I have signed up for the Google Apps Developer Blog, which often yields some tasty code McNuggets.

One can track postings and content in Google Apps at this URL, http://code.google.com/ .

Google also posts some useful information on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/googledevelopers .

Google Version 2.0, described the method by which Google can deliver most if not all of the GSA’s functions via the cloud.

It is very likely that by the end of 2010, an enterprise will be able to “hook” together various functions, including some of the third-party indexing features of the GSA with Google’s cloud services.

Instead of integrating Microsoft Exchange content with business intelligence data from Cognos (acquired by IBM), to name two supported third-party systems, an enterprise will have more integration options that essentially “snap in.”

And until Google productizes those code components, an authorized Google integrator like Adhere Solutions (http://www.adheresolutions.com/ ) can mesh various Google components today.