Google tries to sneak one past IT

During the last year, we've seen Google slowly sneaking into the enterprise, with a series of solutions that bring the company's web-based consumer technologies into a corporate environment. Just this past week, we saw the latest such product from Google, an email security/discovery suite based on Postini technology. Despite Google's best efforts, however, we haven't exactly seen enterprises rushing to deploy Google's software, which has proven quite popular with consumers. So, what's a Google to do? Why, sneak its software into the corporate world, of course.

The company's latest enterprise product, Google Apps Team Edition, is a version of Google Apps that's designed for corporate users but can be used without the IT department's knowledge. "Current business versions of Google Apps are linked to an organization's Internet domain and therefore require IT approval and at least some degree of administration," Ars Technica writes. "Team Edition eschews this approach, and allows end-users to create sharing workgroups so long as the individuals in question have valid e-mail addresses within the employer's Internet domain."

So, what's the big idea? Seems like Google is aiming to use GATE as a sort of Trojan horse--a way of convincing businesses to deploy Google Apps. "Google Apps has been, by definition, an IT project, and now we want to let people use it without IT involvement," Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth said. "The IT department always has the option to sign up for the Standard Edition for free if they want to provide control over this. This is a solid, happy medium."

For more on Google's sneaky new product:
- see this Ars Technica article