Google Apps is offering migration for Microsoft Exchange. The service is free with Google Apps Premiere or Google Apps Education.

Last July, Google Apps began offering migration from IBM’s Lotus Notes. Most enterprises are standardized on either Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, which means that Google now pretty much can migrate any organization to the cloud. Google also offers connection to Blackberry Enterprise Server.Google Apps is providing migration for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007.

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Microsoft has very limited capability to offer a cloud-based email environment. Most of the offerings it provides are locally installed, single-hosting services. Concerns will wane about cloud security. The ability to offer a cloud-based email environment for easy access will be the norm, not the exception. But even though Google has a jump, Microsoft will have its own offering. In the meantime, Google has an opportunity to make another leap into the enterprise.

This does represent a tipping point for many companies shedding IT assets. The question about email often comes up when companies consider moving to the cloud. It’s an important part of the migration. In recent weeks, we have seen how email is becoming a foundation for the evolution of a web oriented, social enterprise. Google Apps Marketplace offers the capability to offer third party applications that integrate with Google Apps. Email is a critical part of the equation in this Google ecosystem. It provides a backbone for companies to connect its employees with Google Apps and the associated third-parties.

The process to migrate looks relatively simple. Through Google Apps, a customer enters their Microsoft Exchange user name and what it calls “two-legged OAuth,” consisting of a consumer user key and a consumer “secret”. They then upload a .CSV file consisting of the email adresses, calendar and contact information. It is optional what to migrate. For example, an IT administrator may upload email addresses and contact data but not the calendar. Email service does not get interrupted during the migration.

This is a compelling offering for companies moving to the cloud. But it’s only part of the equation. Google still needs to prove it is robust enough for the enterprise to migrate to Google Apps. In the meantime, Microsoft needs to act fast and provide a cloud offering that at least gives its own community the option to move Microsoft Exchange to the cloud.

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The IBM Cloud is a prototype of the ecosystem we expect to see emerge in the world of cloud services. It has the flavor of other platform environments, with the primary goal of integrating IBM with third-party applications to serve developers and end customers.

It is the partners that tie into the larger ecosystems, often existing on multiple platforms. The healthy platforms will resemble coral reefs in which the partners are important to the cloud ecosystem as the platform itself.

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But what is the importance of these third-party applications and what do they say about the future of IBM Cloud?

RightScale

RightScale http://rightscale.com is becoming a power in its own right. The San Diego-based company provides a sought after need. The capability to port applications to the cloud. RightScale is playing across the market. It has served as an important partner for Amazon Web Services in helping companies deploy cloud-based applications in the cloud. As part of an IBM ecosystem, the company will be one of those go to services that helps manage the cloud’s inherent complexities.

Kaavo

Kaavo is another cloud management application that leverages its position as a service that according to the web site, provides “middleware on demand.”That’s a fascinating example of how entire infrastructures are moving off premise and into cloud environments. For instance, Kaavo makes the claim that it can bring online one or multiple server systems, configure middleware and deploy applications The result being that people may use the IBM platform to set up and tear down test and and development environments within minutes. Again, we see how IBM is seeking to provide services that serve the needs of the developer or IT manager looking for more efficient and powerful ways t leverage its assets in a private cloud environment or in a public cloud.

Silanis

Silanis fits in the e-signature market. In January, the company announced services that integrate with IBM’s LotusLive. The service allows companies to work with customers in an extranet environment where contracts may be reviewed, modified and electronically signed. The service would seem to fit with IBM’s efforts to create a transaction environment within IBM Cloud.

Aviarc

IBM is partnering with several application developers, including Aviarc, a custom software application developer for on-premise, private cloud, appliances or the multi-tenant environment of IBM Cloud.

These are just samplings of the ecosystem that IBM is developing. You can tell that IBM is following its strategy to serve hybrid environments and establish its platform as a place where developers may build, test, sell and distribute applications.

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The Windows Phone 7 news kind of threw us a bit this week. It had almost no mention about how it would serve the enterprise. It almost seemed like Microsoft had given up.

Now we are starting to see some reports about how Windows Phone 7 would fit for the mobile enterprise. And it makes us wonder. Will the Windows Phone 7 better serve the enterprise than the iPhone?

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The Blackberry is the leader in the market. For our purposes, we are looking at how the challengers compare to each other. Android may become the biggest rival to the Blackberry with its tight integration into Google’s enterprise suite and the ability to use multiple applications at the same time.

I’s the iPhone that looks a bit vulnerable. Without a doubt, the iPhone is showing success in the enterprise. Apple had a robust earnings report for the fourth quarter thanks in good part to sales of the iPhone to people who use it for work.

But here’s the catch. We really have not seen any bona fide use of mobile collaboration tools as of yet across any device. People are using smartphones to check messages and use applications. The applications they do use are services like Twitter.

When mobile collaboration does find its place in the market, it’s not going to be a one application world. It will require the ability to mashup data, pulling information from multiple sources. Our daily work requires us to use multiple applications simultaneously. That’s not possible with the iPhone. And it will not be possible with the iPad. This issue will become even more pronounced as more enterprise applications enter the mobile market.

In comparison, Windows Phone 7 is an information centric device. Information is stored in hubs and you can view the different hubs as a panorama on the device screen. That makes it potentially better than the iPhone or the Nexus One, which do not have that capability.

People want to see the information without having to go from application to application. A panorama is more akin to the experience we get on a device like a laptop. That’s far more suitable for the enterprise.

Gizmodo:

“Out of the box, this information is organized into areas called hubs, which follow the user’s areas of interest. Accessible through live tiles in the home screen, the Me (the user), people, pictures and video, music, and games–plus the omnipresent search–hubs give views into several data sources, connecting and presenting them into an interweaved panoramic stream. These hubs dig heavily into many databases, both locally and into the cloud.”

Ironically, Microsoft often get labeled as a company that creates silo environments. From our view, the mobile applications of today have a certain silo effect. Windows Phone 7 and its hub structure means that it can draw from deep databases from on-premise and the cloud. That to us seems like a powerful combination that is well suited to an enterprise world.

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Google Apps is making it a bit more enticing for companies of all sizes to adopt its service for the Blackberry smart phone.

In a post this morning on the Google Enterprise blog, the group announced Google Apps Connector for Blackberry Enterprise Server has doubled the number of Blackberry phones it can support. This effectively allows larger enterprises to place more users on fewer servers.

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Google is also offering the capability to host multiple Google App accounts, broadening the number of users that can be supported.

In August, Google Apps launched its integration with Blackberry. The most significant aspect of the integration is the syncing capabilities. Google Apps Connector provides access to Google Apps email, calendar, and contacts from the built-in BlackBerry applications.

Email, folders and contacts are all synchronized between Google Apps and the Blackberry application.

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