Google Apps attractive to small firms

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Ritu Raj opened Wag Hotel here as a luxury home-away-from-home for pampered dogs, he decided he would run the business on Google applications.

Employees check in dogs on touch-screen monitors, make appointments and use e-mail, all with Google Apps. The Web-based suite of tools -- which includes corporate e-mail, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software -- is aimed squarely at Microsoft's lucrative Office software franchise.

For Raj, the decision started with cost. Apps is cheap or free, has more liberal usage terms than Office and doesn't require a tech team to set up and manage.

"But it's not just that," he says. "You have no idea how much time it takes to train people. The young people we attract to work here are very familiar with Google. That's a tremendous savings."

Microsoft Office is a software behemoth ...