Google Wave Not Coming to Resellers–Yet
Google Wave — Google’s heavily hyped unified communications effort — continues to generate a ton of buzz all over the Internet, despite only being in semi-open beta. Wave sounds promising but it won’t be a part of the Google Apps reseller program, at least not at launch.
“No timeline at this point,” says Google Apps Channel Manager Jeff Ragusa. “But I hope our reseller partners see it as an example of how Google is continuing to invest in the future of the web and reminds them why they are partnering with Google to ultimately bring innovative cloud-computing applications to the business environment.”
Innovative, indeed: While I personally haven’t yet received my beta invitation, the blogosphere is rife with people who have. Lifehacker has an excellent piece on how, exactly, this all works, as does Read Write Web. Some fans allege that Google Wave ranks among the most robust collaboration systems ever devised, with the ability to edit and annotate things that have already been typed, embed video, maps, or other applications directly into a conversation, or even turn it into a conference call.
If Google Wave delivers, it could change a lot of things in the SaaS market, especially when and if it becomes available to resellers. Some folks think Wave could even compete with Cisco WebEx and other corporate unified communication options. If it doesn’t–well, remember Google Knol? I didn’t think so.
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