Google: Consumer tech evolves into enterprise IT

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For Google, enterprise IT evolves from the consumer side.

This was the message from Roger De'Ath, Google Enterprise account manager, who was explaining how the originally consumer focused web giant moved into the enterprise space in the first place.

"Google, everyone is aware, is trying to do this enormous project, which is organising all of the world's information and making it universally accessible, or making it accessible to everyone," he explained at a meeting yesterday in London.

"If we are serious about addressing all of the world's information, then we need to be serious about enterprise content, because a lot of the information in the world exists in enterprises," which is why Google Enterprise was founded, he explained.

"Google enterprise... is best thought of as almost Google's software division," De'Ath added.

De'Ath went on to explain that the consumerisation of IT is alive and well at Google. As more and more consumer products move into the business space, it's no surprise that one of the biggest consumer-focused firms is mimicking that route too.

"We're taking what Google's developing often initially in the consumer space, adding on a critical amount of extra functionality, which businesses require, and delivering it where it makes sense - but critically not throwing away the stuff that makes it successful in the consumer space, [such as] easy to use, fast, responsive, highly innovative in terms of quick turnover, and development of the products," he said.

Products like Google Apps have notably followed that route - created for consumers but reworked into enterprise products - but so has search.

"Actually the core of what we do in [the] Enterprise [division] has always been enterprise search," he said, adding 30,000 companies are using Google's enterprise search - in some form - around the world.

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