Thomas Kurian (Google Cloud)
Google is reportedly developing an unified communication (UC) application for enterprises that combine various standalone G Suite services and communication offerings.
According to The Information, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, discussed the app at a January conference for Google Cloud salespeople and business partners.
The site reported the app will be part of G Suite, and will include functionality from Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat. While not given a name, the app is reportedly being tested internally at Google.
As reported by The Information, the app could also assist the tech giant in competing with similar apps from other big vendors, such as Microsoft’s Teams.
While the full extent of this app is currently unknown, there is a big demand for unified communication offerings; Microsoft’s Teams app saw an increase of seven million active daily users between July 2019 and November 2019.
As of 19 November 2019, Teams is being used daily by over 20 million users and over the last month has seen an update that added a push-to-talk “Walkie Talkie” feature.
Prior to this, many new features for Teams were announced at Microsoft’s Ignite 2019 conference in early November 2019. Meanwhile, Google has introduced Secret Manager to Google Cloud and has announced a shutdown timeline for G Suite's Google App Maker.
