Google Apps marketplace begins to take shape

Google [1] launched a brand new applications marketplace last week called Google Apps Marketplace [2]. It works in a similar fashion to the wildly successful Salesforce.com [3] AppExchange [4]. It gives Google Docs business users the ability to add new applications to the Google Apps tool set, and these applications often integrate directly with Google Apps functions such as mail and calendar.

Among the companies that have added applications to the marketplace are Zoho [5], Box.Net [6] and Intuit (the makers of the popular Quickbooks software). For a price, these applications give Google Apps enterprise customers the ability to expand upon the base functionality in Google Apps. This could be especially useful for small- and medium- sized businesses (SMBs) looking for a cost-effective way to implement new software within a familiar framework.

According to the video Google produced to introduce the new service (which can be viewed below), you need to have administrative privileges to add new software to Google Apps from the Marketplace, but the process is fairly straightforward and of course includes a nice search tool to narrow the scope of the search.

For more information:
- see the Official Google Blog post [7]

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