Best Business Services Leads on Google
Googling IBM
In its search for growth, Google should look to corporate customers and partner with IBM.
By Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 editor-at-large
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NEW YORK (Business 2.0) – Google may not be the giant-killer it seemed before Tuesday. But the reaction to its earnings miss just makes it all the more critical that the company find new engines of growth far afield from its core business of search advertising.
Partners and analysts believe that Google (Research) is ready to plunge into the lucrative business-software market—and IBM (Research) may be the best partner to help it dive in.
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Today, Google has few products for businesses. It sells a search engine appliance (a version of its search software bundled with a server machine, essentially). And it has partnered with IBM, Sun (Research), and EMC (Research) to integrate its desktop search software with their server products.
But Google already works with thousands of small and large businesses through its AdWords search-advertising program. And those customers could easily buy more than just ads from Google.
Getting serious beyond search
“I don’t see them limiting themselves to search,” says Marc Andrews, the director of strategy and business development in an IBM software unit who also oversees the current desktop-search partnership with Google. “That is why Microsoft and others are scared of them.”
Industry watcher Frank Gens, a senior vice president at market research firm International Data Corp., argues that Google will get serious in enterprise software by partnering with existing software companies to help them bring their applications online. “My prediction is in the next 30 to 60 days you will see some big names pick up Google as a strategic partner around information management and search,” he says.
Eyeing the success of Salesforce.com (Research), makers of enterprise software are thinking about how to deliver their software products through a browser, rather than through desktop software. Customers will want to simultaneously search all the data from multiple Web-based software applications—a natural role for Google. Likely partners include smaller enterprise software players who could benefit from Google’s brand, and don’t currently have an online offering of their own.
Best Business Services Leads on Google
Jim Skelton,
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