Google Enters Enterprise 3.0 Collaboration

Google has just acquired a small Swedish Webex competitor, Marratech, entering the Enterprise 3.0 collaboration game.

Earlier, Cisco acquired Webex for $3.1 Billion, and postured to take on Microsoft, a leader in the enterprise collaboration space.

I used to wonder for the longest time why Google wasn’t buying Webex. Well, now all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

There’s one thing that Google has missed, however, which is that to play in the Enterprise space, they need to worry about Security. Webex has done an excellent job with the Extended Enterprise trend, and helping people collaborate across firewalls. Moving forward, this will continue to be a vital issue, and if Google doesn’t address it, then they will most likely be stuck in the very low end of the SME (Small Medium Enterprise) market and in SOHO (Small Office Home Office) , where secure communication doesn’t matter quite as much!

Finally, if Google is going down this path, the next thing to get their hands on is a Project Management capability. Here’s my review of eProject.

And if Google does want to consider beefing up Security, here’s a discussion with Philippe Courtot, CEO of Qualys, a leader in security SaaS.