There are two sides to the proverbial “cloud coin” for small business owners. You can view cloud services, like Google Apps, as a time and money saver, allowing you to focus on your core business as opposed to IT needs. Or, you can view them as your worst nightmare, and shun the thought of having all your business data stored on third-party servers. For those whose views align more closely with the former perspective, Google wants to offer you greater flexibility and options for your cloud data. Yesterday, Google announced that Google Apps customers will have the ability to purchase and use third-party tools in their Google Apps cloud deployments. The Apps Marketplace has over 50 applications ranging from payroll and tax software to project management and development tools. “The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike,” writes Google. Quickly running through the new Apps Marketplace we think this could be a pretty big hit for Google’s Apps service. We’ve got the launch video queued up for you after the break.
