Network management Toolkit

Google moves into business apps

Elinor Mills CNET News.com

Published: 29 Aug 2006 08:25 BST

Starting on Monday, organisations will be able to offer members or employees Web-based email, calendar, chat and Web page publishing hosted by Google for free.

Google is now offering a beta version of Google Apps for Your Domain, which includes Gmail with 2 gigabytes of storage, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Page Creator.

The new service is an extension of Gmail for Your Domain, a service that Google launched in beta version in February. It allows organisations to use Gmail applications with their own email address, instead of the "@gmail.com" domain.

The Gmail for Your Domain test service has tens of thousands of active domains, hundreds of thousands of users and hundreds of universities registered to use it, said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google's enterprise business.

The Google Apps for Your Domain service will allow organisations to outsource their communications applications to Google and to customise the user interface with their own branding and colour scheme. Administrators will have access to an English-language Web-based control panel to do things such as manage the user account list and set up aliases and distribution lists.

A premium edition with support and additional storage will be available by the end of the year for a fee, Girouard said. He declined to provide more details.