Google sees big data and collaboration as key to enterprise growth

MWC Advisor research analyst Helena Schwenk told V3 that given Google's past involvement with big data around Map Reduce it's well placed to become a serious contender in this market.

"I believe it holds promise to lower the traditionally high up-front cost barriers of analytic deployments by providing a more cost-effective, quicker to deploy and more scalable analysis environment," she said.

In particularly she said Big Query could be viewed as an "analytics-in-the-cloud offering" that can be used as and when by businesses to analyse data in huge volumes.

"Its ability to allow firms/developers to take advantage of Google's massive compute power, store large volumes of data as needed, and pay only for what they use, is likely to appeal to smaller companies especially those that face budget and resource constraints," she added.

Big data represents one of the four main growth areas in the IT world at present and Davies told V3 Google is no different from other in the market to focus on this and the other three of mobility, social, and cloud computing and, crucially, the way they are merging together.

As such, when discussing the its Google+ platform for enterprise use, Davies said people had misunderstood it as purely a social tool, rather than another piece to its overall offering that merged trends together.

"People are crying out for a new ways of working. We see massive interest and traction in collaboration and so Google+ for the Enterprise is immersed in collaboration. That's a big bet for us," he said.

As a result Davies said Google+ is not just a social tool but a much wider offering of which social is just one aspect.

"People had expected us to build a standalone destination site for social - ‘thou shalt go here to be social' - but we don't believe in that," he said.

"Social is a fabric that goes into all our products. Look at the ability to do social commenting in Google Docs, the integration of Google Hangouts into Gmail and Calendar.

"We're seeing these things merge together - collaboration and social into one."

He also touted the firm's push to develop enterprise grade controls for Google+ as another example of the work it's doing to entice companies to the platform, citing customers wins of ITV, Ocado Trinity Mirror as firms that have moved to use its platform.