Here is one for your long term radar. Google’s nascent office suite is going to a paid model called Google Apps Premier Edition and is in testing with corporate players like GE. While challenges to Microsoft’s hegemony in office suites have come and gone, Google’s challenge is qualitatively different because it comes through the web browser rather than sitting on the desktop.

The advantages of this method are:

• Google can control the user experience while maintaining most of the code on their servers.
• This means a subscription model rather than licensing (reportedly around $50/year), that could undercut Microsoft's pricing.
• Goodbye to the days of large refresh projects upgrading everyone’s workstations to the latest version and less maintenance for individual computers.
• Updates won't be every three-five years, but will be added whenever Google rolls them out.

While other professional services firms may be interested in this model, we don’t see law firms rushing out to adopt Google’s approach until security and confidentiality concerns can be met. Not to mention the fact that functionality on web-based office applications will need a couple of years to mature. As we mentioned before, a hybrid model where firms can host the office applications on their own servers for delivery through web browsers would be the best method.

While we won't like seeing our technology refresh and upgrading business go away, web-based applications will likely play a very large role in IT in the next few years. Even Microsoft is in the game with the new version of Outlook Web Access and their Live web-based applications.