Can Google App Engine compete in the enterprise?

Google has killed its App Engine for Business offering, the enterprise-friendly version of its Platform as a Service that included a partnership with VMware around the Spring Java framework. Part of a bevy of changes to App Engine announced at last month’s Google I/O conference, the news went largely unnoticed in the shadow of major pricing adjustments. But the missteps with App Engine for Business are indicative of the types of challenges Google faces as it attempts to ready its PaaS service to compete with companies like Red Hat and Salesforce.com in luring enterprise developers.

No more App Engine for Business

I spoke with Gregory D’alesandre, senior product manager for Google App Engine, who explained to me Google’s new approach to selling PaaS to businesses. In retrospect, he said, Google might have announced App Engine for Business too early — more than a year ago — before it had a chance to gauge reaction to some of its more-limiting features. The company’s “trusted testers,” it turns out, liked many of the features, but they didn’t like the idea of a separate offering or the fact that App Engine for Business locked down API access from outside the owner’s domain.

So, D’alesandre explained, many of App Engine for Business features have or will be rolled into App Engine proper, which Google actually will take out of “preview” mode later this year and make an official part of its Google Enterprise portfolio. D’alesandre said that SQL support, SSL encryption and full-text search, all parts of the App Engine for Business offering, are top priorities not just for the App Engine team, but for Google overall, and should be ready once the product loses its “preview” status. SQL support, he added, is particularly important because of its appeal to enterprise developers, but it’s a complex process incorporating it into a platform that wasn’t designed with SQL in mind.

App Engine also still will support Spring for developing Java applications, D’alesandre said, and Google is actively working with VMware to figure out the next steps to advance their cloud computing partnership even beyond Spring. Other features of the new, improved App Engine will be a 99.95 percent SLA and additional support options. D’alesandre noted that expanded Python support and some new API improvements are in the works, too.