Enterprise IT's trust level of Google will increase

TechRepublic's CIO Jury finds that IT leaders trust Microsoft more than Google as a technology partner, but tune in next year.

Jason Hiner outlines the latest findings in the TechRepublic CIO Jury. In a nutshell, it looks like this:

So why do I expect Google's standing to look better next year? Last week, I was at the Gartner IT Symposium and you couldn't escape chatter about Google and what it may be able to do for the enterprise. And here's what caught my attention: The audience---not the analysts---were yapping about Google in the enterprise.

Rest assured, that skepticism abounds about Google. That's natural---and actually quite healthy. But this is the second consecutive year that Google has been on the enterprise IT radar. In 2008, tech execs were more curious about Google than anything. Anyone arguing that Google was about to take over the enterprise in 2008 was smoking hype. This year there was more curiosity, but also a lot of interest in returns and logistics. Simply put, enterprises are more than curious---they're ready to move.

Now Google isn't going to run any large enterprise whole hog, but I'm confident that the search giant will get its share---especially as email moves to the cloud. It's increasingly hard to justify running your own email and at $50 a user a year, Google's price is a bit hard to beat. Of course, IBM sees the same thing and has its own enterprise email in the cloud service for less than Google will charge (assuming you don't need a lot of storage).

Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow Technologies, is one of the many IT chiefs pondering cloud email.

This interest in Google in the enterprise has been consistently building. In fact, Gartner notes that Google is one of its most popular searched terms for research. If anything multiple events are coming together in Google's favor. Enterprise IT has to deal with consumerization, users that are demanding more and bosses that want expenses chopped.

Simply put, the enterprise is coming around to what Google can offer. And it doesn't hurt that Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a very credible talk to CIOs last week. As Google's services improve more enterprises are going to consider the search giant a viable alternative.

Related:

• Google's Schmidt makes enterprise app case as consumer, corporate lines blur
• How did IT fall so far behind the tech curve?
• How to know when to send your email to the cloud
• Looking beyond Windows 7 and Office; Pondering the alternatives
• HP's Hurd: Cloud computing has its limits (especially when you face 1,000 attacks a day)