GAPE in the Enterprise....Does it have a future?

"Google Apps in the Enterprise" is a compelling article that dissects both the pros and cons of Google's attempts to to promote their Google Apps Premier Edition to large enterprises. It talks about the various components, including Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Page Creator, Google Talk, and the control panel to administer these in an enterprise environment, and compares the functionality and feasibility of these against against offering found in Microsoft Office or Sharepoint 2007. The author explores the maturity of "Software as a Service" (SaaS) and the pitfalls and potentials of Google entering the Enterprise Content Management industry. The compare the infancy of SaaS to the infancy of the LAN to network PC's together and the early days of electricity (giving credit for AC to George Westinghouse instead of Nikola Tesla...I was offended), and thus recognizing the immense potential for SaaS in the future. They brought up some good points in that Google likes to release software that is "not quite ready" and that a company that adopted GAPE is loses a substantial amount of control of the versions of their applications and may sacrifice some privacy. But a couple other thoughts came to mind in reading this article. Companies that utilize a NAS and use their domain authentication to access files on that NAS would not be able to pass-through domain credentials to access files stored on Google servers. For the common user, this may create some complaints. Also, no matter how simple GAPE would be to use, there would still be a learning curve as people adapted to the interface when we as a society have become so accustomed to Microsoft Office. But, even through these pitfalls and the descriptions of different markets addressed by Google or Oracle or Salesforce.com, this brought memories of the idea of Application Service Providers. providing Applications from a central location that same way ISP's offer Internet connectivity. Although the term "ASP" was not mentioned in the article, this idea has been around for a few years and seems to be the way of the future. The same way IBM was okay to let Microsoft license the OS because "everyone knows the money in is the hardware", maybe now the money is in offering only the software a company needs, when they need it, and only in the amount they need.