Google has introduced App Engine for Business aimed at allowing companies build and maintain their own applications on the same scalable infrastructure that powers Google applications.

New features for businesses include the ability to manage all apps in an organization from one place, simple pricing based on users and applications, premium developer support, a 99.9 percent uptime service level agreement, and coming later this year, access to premium features like cloud-based SQL and SSL.

Google has also been working with VMware on cloud portability, which makes it easier for Java developers to use tools they are familiar with to develop and deploy rich web apps in the environment of their choice. In one click, users of the new versions of SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Web Toolkit can deploy their application onto Google App Engine for Business, or a VMware environment, or other infrastructure such as Amazon EC2.

Other key features of Google App Engine for Business include:

Secure by default: Only users from your Google Apps domain can access applications and your security policies are enforced on every app.

Pricing that makes sense: Each application costs just $8 per user, per month up to a maximum of $1000 a month. Pay only for what you use.

Centralized administration: A new, company-focused administration console lets you manage all the applications in your domain.

Google App Engine for Business is currently in preview, open to a limited number of enterprises.