For Chrome OS to be considered by any reasonably large business, their IT decision-makers are going to want to know that Chrome OS is going to be around and supported by Google many years from now.
Actually, they just want to know that it will be around and supported by someone.
The change over to things like Chrome OS will be partly generational, much like it was with web applications. Young people brought up on Chrome OS will start businesses which will use Chrome OS to run their businesses fast and lean. Larger firms will have a lot of cultural inertia to overcome.
You bring up a good point, actually: since Chrome OS is almost entirely open source as Chromium OS, couldn't just about anybody step in and provide a reasonable level of support for a fee, in the unlikely event the Google decides to quit?
Absolutely. To me the key "risk" really is not so much the OS going unsupported but any Google services that it depends on doing so. Which is more about the buy in to things like Google Docs, Calendar, etc. The risk is all the higher because the services are "live". If Microsoft gives up on MS Exchange, your exchange server doesn't immediately stop working. But if Google turns off Google Calendar one day because it's not turning a profit ... oops.
The problem is that, for me, a huge part of the value of ChromeOS is provided by Google's suite of apps. Those apps are the reason it is viable in the business space. I would be looking for a way to run hosted versions of those in house and then we would have a really interesting situation.
This issue was the main reason that we decided against Google Apps for our email system. If we're running an Exchange or Domino server then even if MS/IBM stop supporting it we can continue to use everything and plan a migration. Google could turn off decide GMail was unprofitable and turn it off tomorrow, and everyone would be screwed.
I went to a Google Enterprise sales event and asked them about an internally-hosted version, but they were very clear that this wasn't something they were considering.
You could protect yourself against this by building an internal IMAP server and syncronising it with Google regularly. But that's a lot of work, and maintaining your own email server negates many of the benefits of outsourcing to a cloud service.
turn it off tomorrow, and everyone would be screwed
Could Google stop offeringing Google Apps at some point? It could happen. Tomorrow? No way. They have shown that they give people time and options when they no longer want to provide a service. Google Apps would be no different and they would probably even work a lot harder at making that easy.
Just anybody could step in, but that will not solve the trust problem the enterprise has, unless that anybody is in the IBM/Oracle category. If such a trusted company steps in, chances are most of the financial arguments to move to Chrome OS would lose credibility.
Actually, they just want to know that it will be around and supported by someone.
The change over to things like Chrome OS will be partly generational, much like it was with web applications. Young people brought up on Chrome OS will start businesses which will use Chrome OS to run their businesses fast and lean. Larger firms will have a lot of cultural inertia to overcome.