Google finds itself in a daunting position on Feb. 22, the third birthday of Google Apps Premier Edition. The company is trying to dislodge legacy on-premises installations from Microsoft and IBM while fighting off SAAS solutions from those same companies. It also has to compete with new cloud offerings from Cisco Systems, as well as from a slew of startups such as Zoho, MindTouch and others. But Google, Microsoft and IBM will be the main protagonists in the battle for pre-eminence in the market for cloud, or Web-based, collaboration software.
– When Google launched its Google Apps Premier Edition to the market three
years ago, it marked a bold bet on the future of collaboration software.
The collaboration software market was, and still is, ruled by Microsoft and IBM,
which boast more than 650 million customers for their respective Micro…