Google — whether they admit it or not — is aiming directly at Microsoft’s hold on office suite software. They announced today that they will offer a “Premier Edition” of their Google Apps software to companies for an annual fee of $50 per seat.

The fee-based version, Google Apps Premier Edition, includes five times more e-mail storage — 10 gigabytes per e-mail box — as well as a guarantee that all services will be available 99.9 percent of the time with around-the-clock technical support. Google also is adding mobile access to e-mail accounts through the BlackBerry devices that tether workers to their offices.

I use GApps for my personal stuff. GMail offers to open .DOC and .XLS attachments in Google Docs, which I’m beginning to use that more and more instead of downloading and opening in Word or Excel. I’ve been amazed at the simplicity of the GApps interfaces, and that the applications are really full featured.

In an office/professional setting I don’t know if I’m sold on the idea. Part of me feels that I would miss the “functionality” that comes with MS Office. Although, I have a coworker that just recently switched to a MacBook Pro, and his one concern going in was that he would miss Outlook. He said he hasn’t even thought about it. Maybe this is the same type of thing, where I think I’d miss it (perhaps a little brainwashing on Microsoft’s part) but in actuality I wouldn’t even notice it because I’d be so happy with the new product.

What are your thoughts on this announcement? Is there a piece of software they are missing before this will become a really viable alternative to MS Office (I know, Presently has been rumored)?

EDIT - I completely overlooked the Blackberry bit from the quote above. For those working in SMBs, does the promise of mobile access (at a much reduced price) give serious traction to this when compared to the Exchange/Blackberry combination?