Google is launching an international mass marketing advertising blitz from today for its cloud-based enterprise solutions.
The online search and advertising giant says more than 2 million businesses now use its online office software and is aiming squarely at capturing more Microsoft and IBM users.
The “Going Google” campaign, which was launched in the US in August, will run from Monday across France, Japan, Australia, Canada, Singapore and the U.K, and will feature ads in business publications in addition to billboards at airports and train stations in various cities.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told investors on Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings conference that he intended to boost investments in new business initiatives, particularly the enterprise apps division. The campaign boats the advantages of cloud computing via Google Apps, a suite of e-mail, word processing and other applications served via the Internet and hosted on Google's servers, as an alternative to applications from Microsoft, IBM and others that are downloaded locally to workers' PCs.
Since the US launch of the campaign the ads and word-of-mouth from customers tweeting about the cloud computing applications on Twitter have boosted Google Apps adoption to 20 million users in 2 million businesses, Tom Oliveri, enterprise marketing for Google, told press.
The Apps team has doubled over the past year to more than 1,000 employees.