The tool from Google, announced in late May, aims to merge virtually all real-time and non-real-time online communications, including e-mail, IM, wikis, blogs and social networks. It's designed to work in real time, be flexible, and accept add-ons. Recently, the first 100,000 invitations to try Wave were sent out.

"I love the concept," said Irwin Lazar, a vice president at Nemertes Research. "We've been talking about the uses of unified communications. This represents the integration of real-time voice, video and IM with non-real-time things such as e-mail and document sharing."

'Not Soup Yet'

There's a wide gap, however, between a good idea and something that businesses should roll out. The question of whether Google Wave is a good idea for businesses in both the long and short term was answered by Lazar as well as Scott Yates, who follows Google Wave for Examiner.com.

Yates, who got one of the invitations, said companies should be careful about adopting Google Wave for the time being. He agrees that its potential is great, but said the service is complex to use.

"The problem is that it is just not soup yet," he said. "People should not be trying to get into Google Wave unless they are pretty technical. It's just hard to use."

Yates added that the service's reach is limited. "The fundamental reason to hold off right now is that it is a communications tool -- but you can't get invitations for everyone you want to communicate with," Yates said. "The potential is huge, but it just needs more time."

Enterprise Players in the Wings

Companies also should be reluctant to plan their communications infrastructure around Google Wave. Lazar said many of the features being introduced in the Google Wave environment likely will show up in more established enterprise messaging platforms next year.

"What we are telling folks is to look at Wave, play with it, build in some awareness," but actually get the functionality when it becomes available in enterprise-grade products, he said.

There will be no shortage of choices next year, Lazar added. "If you look at where IBM is heading with its Connect product and Microsoft with SharePoint 2010, [it shows that there are] a lot of collaborative elements," he said. "People will be able to use them as a collaborative work space and tie in real-time voice, presence, IM and so on. You will begin to see those products evolve into things similar to Wave. They are a little bit behind at this point."

There's another reason businesses are likely to wait for other companies to offer Google Wave's features -- and it has more to do with Google than its competitors. "There are privacy concerns with Google," Lazar said. "We talked to a lot of companies, and they are scared to death of using Google. They are afraid of seeing their e-mail and messaging being mined."