The partnership of Google with Sxip Access is a strategic moved and aimed to address application hosted security risk. This may have an impact on the acceptance but does not entirely erase security concern as online transaction is always couple with the notion of having the highest security risk. Also, acceptance of Google Apps will not only be about security but will always boil down to the market level of trust.

Google has partnered with Sxip Identity to address the security concerns you mention above — centralized user management, access control and password login. Sxip Access provides secured, controlled identity and access management for APS, which includes:

* Centralized user management: maintain centralized user control by tightly integrating with existing enterprise corporate directory infrastructure such as LDAP or Active Directory

* Provisioning/ Deprovisioning: users added or removed from a designated group in the corporate directory are automatically added or removed from Google Apps.

* Single Sign-On: when users attempt to log in to Google Apps, Sxip Access sends a secure, identity SAML token as a login credential. No usernames and passwords are sent over the internet.

In addition to Google Apps, Sxip Access supports numerous other software-as-a-service solutions such as Salesforce and Postini. For more details see http://www.sxip.com/sxip_access