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The Google Enterprise blog has a post tonight about some new features being unveiled that should assuage some of the critics who discount the security of using Google Apps on a mobile device.

The new features permit corporate IT policies to be enforced from the customer's Google Apps console across different mobile devices with the exception of Android smartphones, which will eventually have similar features.

On-premise applications like Sharepoint are becoming a target for cloud-based services. Up to now, customers could either start with Sharepoint, or an online alternative like Google Sites.

But now we are seeing the emergence of services that help you migrate Sharepoint to Google Apps. LTech announced today that it is offering LTech CloudMove, a tool that automates moving documents to the cloud.

When Google announced an upgrade to their Google Docs service earlier this month, a company blog post also mentioned several third-party applications which can help make the transition to the online service easier. With these apps, you can transfer and synchronize your local files to Google Docs without having to upload them one-by-one. But which application is right for you?

We took a look at the options Google suggested and have summarized the features, drawbacks and pricing information below. In addition, we also reviewed one other application not specifically mentioned in the Google blog post that may be of use to those moving to the cloud-based service.

At CES this past week, Google executive Andy Rubin said that the next version of the Nexus One phone will be for the enterprise. It could have a physical keyboard.

Our bet is that Google Apps will be tightly integrated into the Nexus One enterprise phone. Google syncs every Android phone to a Google account. The next step seems logical. Sync Google Apps with the Android.

In an unusual display of concern, the president of Google Enterprise has made a public statement saying there should be no cause for alarm about Google Apps and its cloud computing infrastructure following a major data breach by a China-based attack on Google and 20 other large enterprise companies.

David Girouard, Google's president of Google Enterprise, said in a personally written blog post that Google suffered a massive cyber attack last month. According to the corporate Google blog, the attackers came away from Google with stolen intellectual property.

Let's say you want a list of every Fortune 1,000 CEO in the United States, along with a picture and contact information.

You can look through Google. Top page results may help a bit. But to get the granularity you need, top page results can only go so far. What's the best way to go about discovering and collecting information that is so often scattered and fragmented?

Crowdsourcing works but you need a process and a way to organize the information.

Security is one of the biggest concerns for business owners when deciding whether to use an online service like Google Apps.

So what are the best ways to protect yourself when using it?

Amit Agarwal is a professional blogger and technology columnist. He writes digital inspiration, a world-class technology blog. But Amit got hacked this week. He wrote about it on his blog, providing some excellent advice on how to protect yourself from a similar kind of attack.

Collaboration services targeted at the small business market often seem more like software suites than Web-based services with deep linking capabilities and tag-based environments.

For example, the new offering from HyperOffice focuses on features that are fundamental to small business operations, but lacks the advanced capabilities that we see from a number of Enterprise 2.0 services.

Is this a good thing? Is this due to the domination of document-based systems that have traditionally been such a part of the small business world?

Google Apps is adding Google Groups to its enterprise suite of applications, another example of Google's commitment to developing an online application environment that is compelling enough for users to move off the Windows platform.

Google Groups has to this point been a consumer service. As part of Google Apps, it now integrates with Google Docs, Google Calendar, GMail, Google Sites and Google Video.

Zoho is now offering full integration with Google Apps, allowing users to seamlessly access Google Docs from within the Zoho environment.  

Zoho already provides integration with Google Apps via sign in. But this is the first time full access to Google Web Apps is available through Zoho applications. It's another move by Zoho to compete with the giants of the business through integrations that allow for interplay across multiple platforms.