Google is announcing some new updates for its G Suite customers at its Google Cloud Next conference today. The company introduced some new AI-focused features for G Suite just yesterday, and it’s announcing a number of additional updates this morning.

For its enterprise customers, Google is launching a new Enterprise SKU for Google Drive. The new enterprise SKU is supposed to let enterprise customers use Drive without having to pay for all the other G Suite services. The pricing of Drive Enterprise is based on usage, with $8 per active user per month, plus $0.04 per GB. “Drive Enterprise is designed for simplified change management at every step of adoption. Migration tools are included to provide a smooth transition to the cloud. And with the Drive Enterprise mobile app and Drive File Stream, users can access files on the go or on demand from their desktops without consuming disk space,” the firm said in a blog post.

Google Drive’s enterprise SKU is supposed to bring in new customers for G Suite. By providing Drive as a standalone service, Google hopes its enterprise customers will eventually move to its full-fledged offering of G Suite. Then again, there isn’t a ton of reasons to not get the full G Suite and “settle” for the standalone version of Drive, unless your company is only looking for cloud storage facilities.

In related news, Google is launching the new Gmail for all G Suite customers today. The firm previewed the new Gmail experience for early adopters back in April, but the new design is now enabled by default for all customers, introducing new snoozing and offline access abilities, plus a fresh new design.

The firm is expanding its Cloud Search service for G Suite customers as well. The feature, which previously allowed users to search for information across all their data stored on G Suite, now lets users enable third-party sources. This means you can now connect Cloud Search to external data sources, and use Cloud Search to find data. Google is also providing a set of new Cloud Search APIs that companies can use to build their own applications that can allow for data analysis and similar uses.

Google has been announcing major upgrades to G Suite at its Cloud Next conference this week. The firm has focused on a wide range of features and services for G Suite users, ranging from improving productivity to enhancing the overall security of the product. It’s no secret Google is taking aim at Microsoft here, though whether these changes to G Suite will be effective at luring in customers away from Microsoft remains to be seen. Keep in mind, Microsoft is just as good — if not better — in this domain, and simply adding new features won’t do the job for Google.

Tagged with Drive Enterprise, G Suite, Gmail, Google Drive, Microsoft 365