Google is beefing up its enterprise strategy with Labs for Google Apps, features that Google Apps administrators can download and plug into their domains, quickly extending the collaboration suite’s core capabilities.
“There is a widely held belief that technology progress in the enterprise is slow and methodical, that adoption cycles are long, and that experimentation is inappropriate. Here at Google we believe that experimentation is a good thing — even in the enterprise space,” said a post Tuesday on the official Google Enterprise Blog.
Three add-on features are now available for download at no charge to Apps customers from Google’s Solutions Marketplace: Google Moderator, for corralling and focusing group discussions; Google Code Reviews, which development teams can use to quality-check source code collaboratively; and Google Short Links, a tool for simplifying the creation and sharing of content links.
“Once installed … users on your domain will be able to log in and access these features alongside existing applications like Gmail and Sites, and your domain administrators can configure them using the standard Google Apps control panel,” Google said.
Google will be adding more Labs applications in the future, according to the blog.
“We’re also planning on opening up the Labs for Google Apps platform to third party developers, so that new and existing vendors can build apps for the million-plus businesses using Google Apps today,” the post adds.