zdnet have posted an article around the new Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) which is going to the market with the help of Salesforce. It will be interesting to see how they play this out and how much it will cost. There is a big battle going on, even in this article with regards to how Microsoft and Google release these products and with what features.

It interests me that Microsoft claim that Google's play is missing document management, compliance and process workflow. They are being very careful not to mention the 'weaker' areas of SharePoint so that Google does not attack them back, for example, the weak wiki and records management capabilities in comparison to other vendors out there (SocialText, Trim, Hummingbird, etc.).

As I discussed in my presentation last night at the Perth SharePoint User Group, Microsoft have yet to show their hand on the hosted desktop space. Microsoft Live is creeping in that direction, but the SharePoint Platform really requires the Office 2007 Client Suite to gain the full potential of the feature set.

Google have also just released the Google Presentations online application to compete with Office PowerPoint. This now gives them the complete suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint competitors.

There is also a lot of talk around the Office Open XML format as an ISO standard. This could really be the clincher for Google in terms of acceptance and Microsoft playing nicely with the format to allow uptake for them.

Google Australia are also being extremely progressive with the new 2007 Australian Federal Election web site. The Google Maps overlay is a really nice touch to show how things are going and I can see this being used more and more all over the world.