Google Will Add Hangouts to its Business Suite

Google woos businesses with its decision to make Hangouts a member of its Google Apps for Business suite. This move will enhance its Chromebox for meetings conferencing system.

The move is in response to the knowledge that Google's business customers want to buy full suite products instead of apps.

"In the early days, we were really focused on email and messaging," said Rajen Sheth, director of product management for Chrome for Business. "We're hitting the second act in the enterprise, expanding to every part of the stack."

It's an inevitable move as the company's biggest rival for business customers, Microsoft, made a fortune by selling software suites, especially Microsoft Office.

Software suites are bundled apps that work together to provide businesses with everything necessary to easily and comfortably write emails, set up video conferencing, set up events and arrange information.

Adding Hangouts to Google Apps for business will provide its business customers with a video conferencing app that can work as good as any other.

To add to that, the service will not require a Google+ profile. Nonetheless, the company is committed to bringing Google+ to enterprise, but it is a complicated product at the moment that touches many areas. Google has to make the Google+ compliant with various certifications before it is ready to reach the company's business partners. Google also plans to bring out Google Apps Vault support to Hangouts by the end of the year.

Google is also teaming up with Blue Jeans to allow different kinds of systems to connect to Hangouts.

The additions made to Chromebox should make it easier to make Google's video conferencing hardware more easily administered and better for a broader range of business customers.

Chromebox for meetings is available in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It will be also be available in Japan, and the UK.

"The more things change, the more people like to have face-to-face meetings," says Sheth.