Summary
At first glance, Google's new Wave technology provides a tool to integrate email, discussion groups, blogs, SMS, and other forms of online communication. Upon deeper review, it provides a platform and protocol that will enable a new breed of social and collaborative applications.
Analysis
Just from an email perspective, Google Wave will solidify Google's technology lead and accelerate the adoption of Google Apps for businesses. There will certainly be a set of early adopters and change will continue to come slowly for most email users but it has the potential to provide a significant boost in productivity over current email systems and, more importantly, how we all use email.
As a collaboration tool, it will start to change the way we use existing systems. For example, you may be able to collaborate and integrate Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, email, and SMS discussions in real time between multiple parties - Google could become the central hub.
For businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses, this will provide one more reason to migrate from a premise based email and messaging platform to Google's hosted solution.
