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Is Salesforce.com angry that Google launched its Google App Marketplace? The enterprise application and cloud computing provider isn’t saying so if it is and both Google and Salesforce.com claim they’re getting along great. Still, while Google and Salesforce.com integrate on Google Apps, Salesforce.com did not join the Marketplace. After all, it has its own AppExchange store to tend to. Despite cordial statements from both companies, analysts see the Google Apps Marketplace as a definite challenge to AppExchange.

News Analysis: Neither Google nor Salesforce.com will acknowledge any friction, but some industry watchers wonder whether Salesforce.com might be secretly chafing at the launch of Google’s Apps Marketplace March 9.

TheGoogle Apps Marketplace lets third party software developers sell applications that integrate with Google Apps, including Google Docs, Calendar and the Sites Web publishing app.

Google Apps customers, which include 2 million business and 25 million active users, can purchase project management apps from Atlassian Softare and Manymoon or billing and accounting software Intuit, among other services. This will provide third-party software developers a larger cloud computing channel into which to sell their applications.

This store, which trades entirely in Web-based or cloud computing applications, follows in the footsteps of Salesforce.com’s successful AppExchange cloud computing store.

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Continuing its aggressive push to build up its cloud computing capabilities through acquisitions with the announcement that it plans to buy Nimsoft for $350 million. Nimsoft joins other acquisitions, including Cassatt, NetQoS, Oblicore and 3Tera, aimed at growing CA’s cloud comput-ing portfolio.

CA is continuing to buy companies to help build up its cloud computing capabilities, with the latest acquisition being Nimsoft.

CA officials announced the $350 million acquisition of Nimsoft March 10 in an all-cash deal, the fifth cloud-centric company the vendor has purchased in the past year. The company expects to close the deal by the end of March.

With Nimsoft, CA gets IT performance and availability monitoring solutions for highly virtualized data centers and cloud computing environments. It also gets greater traction in a number of key areas, including midmarket companies and what CA officials call emerging enterprises—those with revenues between $300 million and $2 billion—MSPs (managed service providers), and emerging global markets, according to CA CEO Bill McCracken.

During a conference with journalist and analysts, McCracken said the deal is about both Nimsoft’s technology and its customers. Nimsoft has about 800 customers in more than 30 countries.

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• CA Buys NimSoft As Cloud Spree Continues (datacenterknowledge.com)
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Google March 9 launched the Google Apps Marketplace, an online store selling enterprises business applications that integrate with and extend Google Apps. This will provide third-party software developers, such as Appirio, Intuit, Atlassian and others, with a larger cloud computing channel into which to sell their applications. The Google Apps Marketplace will also challenge Salesforce.com, which has spent the last decade-plus fomenting its Force.com and AppExchange platforms. Google Apps Marketplace Product Manager Chris Vander Mey told eWEEK that Google will take a 20 percent cut of application sales, recurring on subscriptions.

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Supercomputer maker Cray’s custom engineering group has teamed up with Microsoft Research to look into lowering the costs of running cloud-computing datacenters.

The initiative will make use of the HPC specialist’s intellectual property in system design, including high-density packaging, Cray said in its announcement on Tuesday. The partners will also work on efficient power delivery and cooling innovations, with the aim of reducing facility, power and hardware costs.

“The results of the project have the potential to deliver significant cost savings for operating a cloud-computing datacenter,” said Cray vice president of custom engineering, Chuck Morreale, in a statement.

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The Linux Box has announced a partnership with Canonical Ltd. whereby The Linux Box will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the U.S.

The Linux Box has announced a partnership with Canonical Ltd. whereby The Linux Box will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the U.S.

As a Canonical Silver Solution Provider Partner, The Linux Box will sell, install and support customized Ubuntu-based solutions to organizations running Linux systems. It will also provide businesses with large-scale migration deployment support and training services for cloud computing infrastructures and enterprise desktop alternatives.

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Microsoft experienced a cloud-centric week with Windows Azure, which is now generally available in 21 countries and no longer available for free. Microsoft hopes that the cloud-based platform and its application-building tools for developers will allow it to gain market share in the cloud computing arena, where it faces strong competition from the likes of Google and Amazon. In addition to Azure, Microsoft received some good news on the Windows 7 front, with a new report from Net Applications showing a rising rate of adoption for the new operating system. However, Microsoft continues to face some difficulties in mobile, with the rumor mill suggesting that the company may try to introduce a branded smartphone later this month.

Although Microsoft has traditionally earned the substantial bulk of its revenues from desktop-centric products such as its Windows operating system and Office, the company has also been constructing new cloud-based software as a way of creating a viable future. To that end, Microsoft announced on Feb. 1 that its Windows Azure platform, a competitor in the cloud computing space increasingly crowded by the likes of Amazon and Google, will be made generally available in 21 countries.

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Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard said the company will release a version of Google Voice for businesses, roll out Google Wave to all users who want it, and deliver as many as 200 small features to Google Apps in 2010.  

Google Apps is a suite of Web-based collaboration applications Google hosts on its servers and provisions to users for free and in a premier edition for $50 per user, per year. More than than 2 million business customers use the suite of hosted Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites and other apps.

Google expects to redouble its efforts to combat Microsoft and IBM, whose on-premise collaboration software sit on the servers of hundreds of millions of enterprise customers. Microsoft and IBM moved aggressively against Google Apps in 2009 by rolling out their own collaboration apps that leverage the Web-based cloud computing model.

Girouard told eWEEK that his team added 100 discrete features to the Google Apps suite in 2009, and he expects this number to double in 2010, noting “there will be a steady stream of new capabilities brought to the cloud.”

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A worldwide survey of cost-conscious businesses, commissioned by Microsoft, finds those businesses that value IT as an enabler for better business productivity and effectiveness and those that use hosted services performed better fiscally than those that do not.

Microsoft Corp. released its global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010, which investigates how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) across multiple segments fared during the recession and how they use technology. The research found businesses that value IT as an enabler for better business productivity and effectiveness and those that use hosted services performed better fiscally than those that do not. Technology market research specialist Vanson Bourne between November 2009 and January 2010 executed the report. The survey questioned 3,193 SMBs (up to 500 employees) across 15 countries worldwide.

Despite the global recession, more SMBs surveyed in 2010 reported an increase in revenue than in 2008. Those that reported growth view IT as critical to their business success. In the past 12 months, 52 percent of SMBs reported an increase in revenue, up from 39 percent in 2008. Increasing 20 points since 2008, 55 percent of SMBs view IT as critical to their business. Of the SMBs that view IT as critical, 60 percent saw revenues grow over the past 12 months. In contrast, among SMBs that stated IT is not important, less than 29 percent saw revenue increase.

The 2010 index indicates SMBs are beginning to see the benefits of cloud computing; more than 40 percent of the respondents that use hosted or cloud technology reported revenue rises of 30 percent or more compared with 90 percent of respondents not using hosted technology that saw decreases in revenue. The advantages of hosted or cloud technology are viewed as reduced cost and IT management and maintenance, as well as increased business value, productivity and competitiveness.

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• Microsoft says dealers need not fear hosted IT services (v3.co.uk)

As of February 1, Microsoft officially jumps into the cloud-computing frey and now is charging customers for developing and running apps in its Azure cloud.

(Update: Microsoft’s Azure team said charges actually won’t commence until Tuesday February 2,  in order to sync up billing across time zones. “Microsoft will begin charging for Windows Azure and SQL Azure starting at 12:00 AM February 2, 2010 GMT to ensure that customers and partners are not charged for their free usage in the month of January,” said the team in a February 1 posting annoucing Azure general availability.)

Microsoft has been working on Azure for more than three years; beta testers have been kicking its tires for more than a year. With Azure, Microsoft is attempting to recreate its Windows ecosystem in the form of a utility. Today, developers and customers can develop and deploy on the Windows Azure operating system and make use of the SQL Azure hosted database. In the coming months, Microsoft will make available to developers its Azure AppFabric Web-service utilities. And as 2010 progresses, Microsoft is slated to make available to developers and customers more of the on-premises “private cloud” complements to Azure.

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Apple stands ready to challenge Google in the cloud computing wars with the new iPad, Gartner analysts say. The iPad is geared to provide the most compelling mobile Internet experience users have seen to date, but Google later in 2010 is expected to bring its own vision for mobile Web consumption in the form of netbooks based on its Chrome Operating System.

Apple’s iPad is positioned to challenge Google’s plans for cloud computing if the tablet PC catches on, analysts believe.

The iPad aims to provide the most compelling Internet experience users have seen to date, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaiming that holding the tablet is like “holding the Internet in your hand.”

The 9.7-inch IPS screen displays crisp high-definition video, as well other content such as games, e-books and e-mail for users to consume from the Web or the cloud. Author Nicholas Carr, who watches the cloud computing space closely, summed up the iPad:

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