DevDots

Day 2 for me included a number of discussions with Google Engineers, 1 open social session, 1 GWT session, and 1 “Solution Provider” session. That last one turned out to be the most eye opening for me. So I’ll start with that.

gVAR

I’ve read that Google is aiming to replace Microsoft in the enterprise. Most of those articles have mentioned things like Google Docs and Google Apps. But those features alone won’t replace MS in the enterprise. MS has legions of Microsoft Solution Providers (i.e. VARS) that continue to push MS products into the enterprise and will continue to do so for a long time. The only real way Google can get into the enterprise market is by building out a Solutions Provider program. And the session I attended on Thursday unveiled (at least to me) that they are pursuing it.

Bottom line, they say Enterprises are looking to do more with less and Google Apps lets them do that. Google is anxious to work with VARs and Solution Providers. They’ve set up an online marketplace for services:

http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/

And they listed the following revenue opportunities for solution providers:

   * Application Setup
   * Application customization
   * Sync Tool
   * Data Migration
   * Training and best practices
   * Custom application development
     - GADGETS!
   * API-based infrastructure
   * Remove service administration
   * Help desk support services
   * Reselling and customer referrals

Whats funny is that last one. They listed it, but then said they don’t provide referrals yet. And it wasn’t 100% clear that they intend on doing it. I would guess there is an internal struggle going on regarding that. And they better figure that out, or else their “VAR” program won’t go very far if they aren’t giving their VARs some sort of referral money ( I would think ).

The other one that I found interesting from a technical side is the Custom Application Development one. Its clear that Google Gadgets is becoming entrenched throughout Google’s applications. iGoogle, OpenSocial, SpreadSheets, Calendar, Desktop Search, Sites… All support Google Gadgets. In the Google Apps setting… They’ve made it so you can create Gadgets that are specific to a particular company and those gadgets can run inside the firewall. So, you can imagine an internal Intranet for enterprises built up with nothing but Google Gadgets. And indeed there are a number of solution providers heading in that direction.

Ok just two more interesting tidbits and then I’ll move on.

1. They claimed they’re getting 10,000 new Google Apps domains sign ups a day. Of course they didn’t say how many of those were paid vs. free.
2. Universities are getting into the game and using Google Apps to provide email to their students.

OpenSocial Future

So they just released OpenSocial spec V 0.8. The big addition for that is RESTful APIs.
During this session they described the spec proposal/review process they used for V0.8, and declared they were going to use it again for V0.9.

But that’s not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that V0.9 will include templates. At first I thought it was just going to be OpenSocial’s version of FBML (FaceBook’s Markup Language for applications). And it is, sort of. It is in that OpenSocial’s templates will have tags that can instruct containers to render things using their look and feel. E.g. A template can include the following tag

<os:ShowPerson person="${Cur}" if="${!Cur.IsOwner}"/>

Which will cause each container (Yahoo, Bebo, Hi5, etc.) to render a person in their own look and feel. This will greatly help unify the look and feel of applications on one container. However, unless done right, each container may act differently, and cause applications to have to be rewritten for each container. That wasn’t addressed.

The way these templates are different than FBML is that they can be applied on the client side. Meaning, the V0.9 spec contains a Javascript set of functions that take a template (i.e. Text) as input and renders HTML into the application. So, OpenSocial isn’t giving up any of its client side benefits in order to do this.

http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec/web/opensocial-templates

Big TakeAways for me

1. OpenSocial is going to be much more interesting than I thought.
2. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google Gadgets are declared a “sleeper hit” sometime in ‘08 or ‘09.
3. Developers I talked with are all skeptical of Google App Engine.
4. Google Gears guys aren’t thinking big enough.