Google has announced Google AppEngine for Business ! They are doing it in the most ethical way - with steadfast commitment to AppEngine developers. This new offer will address most of the long drawn 'worries' of the enterprises such as SLA and SSL. Google also has published the Roadmap for this cloud offer. Here is what the communique says :
"Run your enterprise applications on Google’s infrastructure.
Centralized administration: A new, company-focused administration console lets you manage all the applications in your domain.
Reliability and support: 99.9% uptime service level agreement, with premium developer support available.
Secure by default: Only users from your Google Apps domain can access applications by default.
Pricing that makes sense: Each application costs just $8 per user, per month up to a maximum of $1000 a month. Pay only for what you use.
Enterprise features: Coming later this year - hosted SQL databases, SSL on your company’s domain for secure communications, and access to advanced Google services "
I view this as a great step which will enable enterprises to adopt the technology faster and more realistically. Microsoft's approach towards cloud had been somewhat similar, when they announced Azure GA- supporting both Azure platform and hosted SQL. The differentiator between Google and Microsoft would be the quality of services, pricing and the adoption of open source. We need to wait till end of the year 2010 to see the real magic Google will be performing.
Campfire 2010 didn't bring out anything fantastic; however I bet on Google IO - 2011 in April !
