This chapter reviews a few typical ways to integrate Google Apps in an enterprise IS. After discussing, in the last chapter, how to integrate Google Apps in an existing security context, we will describe here four different modes of integration, complementary to each other: the Google Apps APIs make up the first solution. They allow enterprise applications to access the Google Apps. Next, the Secure Data Connector, on the contrary, can open access to enterprise data for Google Apps users, even when the data lies behind an enterprise firewall. We shall also recall how the Google Apps Engine service can run custom code on the Google Apps platform to build scalable applications. Finally, we cover widgets, which are small applications that can help integrate Google Apps services into external web pages.
To put things in perspective, recall that integrating the Google Apps in an identity federation network is probably the most important step towards a full integration. This was the topic of the last chapter and can be thought of as a prerequisite for more advanced integration.
The following figure shows the four modes of Google Apps integration that we shall discuss:
The four modes of integration for the Google Apps: Mode 1 corresponds to using API to give applications access to the Google Apps, mode 2 corresponds to using the Secure Data Connector, mode 3 corresponds to integration in an enterprise portal using "portlets", mode 4 corresponds to Google Apps Engine.