By Irwin Lazar, Principal Analyst and Program Director, Collaboration & Convergence, Nemertes Research Inc.

Sept. 1, 2006

Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG, http://www.google.com/) recent introduction of "Google Apps For Your Domain," (http://www.google.com/a/), including hosted e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, VoIP and Web-development tools geared for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), highlights the increasing opportunities for organizations to leverage hosted software services.

Google is clearly taking aim at Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT, http://www.microsoft.com/) Office Live suite, currently in beta as well. But Google goes one step further by integrating real-time voice and instant-messaging services. Google also differentiates itself from competitors such as Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO, http://www.yahoo.com/) by enabling customers to apply their own branding to the Google-provided services.

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