Demonstrating its commitment to enterprise-level business, Google announced Google OneBox for Enterprise, which it says represents a significant upgrade to its Google Search Appliance, launched last May.

Its determination in this arena is bearing fruit: Google said it has more than 3,000 active enterprise customers, and that revenues at its Google Enterprise division doubled from 2004 to 2005.

The company also announced partnerships with more than 60 business Software vendors, reflecting a growing belief among other players in this space that Google is here to stay.

The partnership agreements allow Google to return more complete results for searches that scour a customer's network ecosystem.

Google also launched a portal for developers, called Google Enterprise Developer Community, to help business application developers better integrate their products with OneBox.

Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager for Google Enterprise, told internetnews.com that OneBox solves a critical business problem, which is that employees can have trouble locating information because it may be buried in one or several repositories. Those can range from email to customer relationship management or other application databases in corporate intranets or portals--or even a user's own desktop.

Girouard said OneBox is "an opportunity to really bring all sorts of information to users in a unified fashion."

Full article: internetnews.com