Google announces business app store for Google Apps

Google announces business app store for Google Apps | Relevant Results – CNET News.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Google is bringing the app store concept to business cloud computing, giving software developers a storefront for Google Apps customers.

TheGoogle Apps Marketplace, announced here Tuesday at the company’s Campfire One event, will allow Google Apps users to purchase third-party applications to run atop the Google Apps suite, said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google. Developers will have to pay a one-time $100 fee to list their applications in the store, and Google will get a 20 percent cut of all applications sold through the store, he said.

Google’s interest in such a storewas first revealed last month by The Wall Street Journal. The idea is that although Google has an army of capable software developers, it can’t hope to anticipate the needs of every single Google Apps user. Third-party developers can fill those gaps and make Google Apps more useful to businesses with unique needs that don’t quite fit into the Google Apps suite.

Take payroll, for example. Google isn’t in the enterprise-resource planning software market (yet), but Intuit is, said Martin Gates, chief technology officer for online payroll at Intuit. At the camp-themed developer meet-up, he demonstrated how Google Apps users can integrate an Intuit-developed Web-based payroll application that’s linked with Google Apps, allowing employees to download their pay stubs simply by clicking on an icon in their Google Calendars.

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