Google signs on 30,000 new Google Apps users at Valeo

Well, Google Apps continues to make headway into the enterprise. Yesterday it was announced that Valeo has deployed 30,000 seats of Google Apps. That’s an impressive sale. The deal was coordinated by Cap Gemini. I’m guessing that it was done by their recently formed cloud computing team that was assembled back in Fall 2008.

There was an even more important piece of news buried in the story though. As the old journalists used to say, “Don’t bury the lead!” Google finally adapted and released a critical piece of technology from their acquisition of Positin that allows corporations to use their existing Active Directory systems (their lists of users and groups and permissions) for Google Apps. Before this Google Apps Directory Sync tool was released, the adoption barrier was so huge that there was no real way for a company to adopt Google Apps. The downstream permissioning nightmares that come with having Google Apps disconnected from your Directory Service are horrendous.

The long and short of this is that with that AD Sync tool now in place, Google has removed one more MAJOR barrier to adoption to large enterprises. Nice work Google Enterprise & Postini Team!