ATLANTA — The Braves pulled Mark Kotsay from their starting lineup judgment Tuesday night’s game in Atlanta, increasing the whisper around Turner Field that the outfielder is about to be traded.

Kotsay, in his first season with the Braves, cleared waivers earlier this month. Both the Brewers and Phillies have reportedly shown interest in Kotsay, who is hitting .289 with six homers and 37 RBIs in 87 games. The Red Sox, who put outfielder J.D. Drew on the disabled list earlier Tuesday with a herniated disc in his back, as SI.com’s Jon Heyman reported, also are considered to be interested.

The vocable around Turner Field is that a trade could be announced through the end of the dauntless. But on a moist night on a slick field in Atlanta, the Braves weren’t taking any chances with Kotsay, installing Gregor Blanco in center and putting Omar Infante in left.

A possible trade isn’t expected to net the Braves much. But the team isn’t self-seeking in signing the 32-year-old Kotsay, who has a narrative of back troubles, for the 2009 season. Instead, the Braves are expected to subsist players in the free-agent market for a power outfielder, and they could give the job in centerfield to prospect Jordan Schafer.

Kotsay, who becomes a free agent after the season, is making $8 a thousand thousand this season, though his cunning team, the A’s, are on the hook for at least $5 million of that.

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) — Steve Skinner, the head of knowledge technology for a self-conceited Bay Area absolute estate agency, recently got his umpteenth call from Google. Would Skinner be interested in buying a package of e-mail, vocable processing and other software known as Google Apps for his company’s 1,300 employees?

Skinner formerly again declined. He thinks that Google Apps, while promising, has a ways to go before it can crack the market for corporate software that Microsoft has long dominated. In June, Skinner renewed a contract to run Microsoft’s desktop software for another three years.

"I slip on’t know if [Google Apps] is ready for primetime yet," related Skinner, the technology chief at Saratoga, Calif.-based Alain Pinel Realtors.

It’s a refrain that Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) hears a lot these days from big companies. Eighteen months posterior making a push into corporate software, only a handful of Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies have started using Google’s programs - mostly anti-spam or calendaring tools - and none have embraced Google Apps in its entirety, preferring instead to stick with Microsoft Office or its distant competitors.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) last year sold $12.2 billion worth of Office software, according to research firm Gartner. Google pulled in conscientious $4 million from Google Apps.

One reason for Google’s tough slog is simple inertia. Switching from one set of corporate software to another is hugely time-consuming. But Corporate America’s reticence also stems from Google’s overarching goal: to replace packaged store-bought software loaded on a desktop with programs that inhabit slightly on Google’s servers and are accessed via the Internet.

A lot of companies, from IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) and Salesforce.com (CRM), are betting that Web-based, or "cloud," computing is the what may occur hereafter of software (consumers already use it to onset their Yahoo or AOL e-mail). Merrill Lynch estimates that online business applications will grow to a $95 billion market within five years. Even Microsoft, which has a lift-lock on 98% of the market according to desktop office software, is getting into the quarry.

The market for online office software is "wide open," said Guy Creese, an IT analyst by the Burton Group who predicts that the race will come down to Microsoft Office and Google Apps. To win, he added, "Google has to come up with something significantly cheaper and better than Office."

The fact that no major corporation has switched to Google Apps doesn’t faze Matthew Glotzbach, management director for Google Enterprise. Big businesses increasingly are showing interest in the software. "This is the playbook we expected," he said. "With any new technology you’re going to see smaller companies being the earlier adopters."

On the face of it, Google has a winning proposition: Google Apps, which includes e-mail, calendar, Web messaging, vocable processing, spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations, is plenteous cheaper than Microsoft Office: $50 per user by means of year, compared to the $350 per user that major corporations disburse on average each year to force Office and Microsoft Outlook e-mail. With Google Apps, teams of workers can be on a single spreadsheet or document in real-time. Also, there’s no need to back-up or transfer files from multiple computers.

According to Google, more than 500,000 companies appliance at least one its programs and about moiety of those are using a free version. Universities in particular like the free Gmail service against students, although it offers less storage and fewer security features than the fee-based version. Cash-strapped startups are also turning to Google Apps.

So far, though, the largest Fortune 500 company to use Google Apps is Sanmina-SCI (SANM, Fortune 500), an electronics manufacturing company that has 900 of its 45,000 employees using the full bundle of applications. Another paying Google Apps customer is Valeo, a publicly-traded French automotive supplier. General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) is running Postini, an anti-spam technology that Google acquired last year, for its 300,000 employees.

A year gone, Washington D.C. became the first U.S. city to use Google Apps when it paid $1.9 million for 38,000 accounts. The Google services are optional, and employees primarily use Microsoft Office and e-mail. For Vivek Kundra, the city’s chief denunciation officer, the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks highlighted the advantages of having sensitive data on a virtual network. Google stores intelligence seven times on seven divers servers across the rural parts.

Even so, eight IT directors interviewed for this story say they’re backward to switch to Google Apps. They summon a number of reasons common to all "vast assemblage computing" providers, including concerns about reliability and the risks of storing employee records or trade secrets on another firm’s servers.

Steve Skinner of Alain Pinel Realtors, for instance, figured he could save $250,000 a year by switching the company’s e-mail server from Microsoft Exchange to Google’s Gmail. But a two-hour service outage a few weeks ago reminded him that there’s a value to giving up control over his company’s technology.

For Shoukry Tiab, the vice president of IT at Jenny Craig, which uses Postini and Google Maps, the primary concern is security and confidentiality. "Am I forceful to host incorporated information on someone other’s server? Yes, even grant that it’s Google."

Jenny Craig instead is testing SharePoint, Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps but with a twist: SharePoint is designed to work in conjunction with desktop software so that, if there is an Internet outage, critical information isn’t inaccessible. Google is moving on making its applications turn to account offline.

SharePoint points to another problem for Google. According to Creese, the Burton Group analyst, Google Apps doesn’t yet have some advanced features that businesses demand, like the ability to bring into being footnotes.

Another reason for Google Apps’ slow start: It began in 2006 as a popular free package of programs with respect to consumers before Google last year rebranded it as a service for businesses. Convincing companies to embrace Google Apps isn’t like easy, but Glotzbach, the Google Enterprise executive, thinks the strategy will ultimately pay off.

"The way people work is shifting," said Glotzbach. "It’s completely well-nigh working in teams, sharing information, and working across house boundaries. Google Apps is designed around this new paradigm." 

Cuban police be the subject of arrested sectary musician Gorki Aguila without ceasing a lay at one’s door of "dangerousness," fellow band members said Tuesday.

Hebert Dominguez, the bass player in Aguila’s punk asylum band, Porno para Ricardo, said police detained Aguila at his home at 10 a.m. Monday.

Aguila, the lead vocalist, was arrested for example he was about to record the final songs of the ligature’s next record, according to a statement on the band’s Web site.

"This new episode of harassment and persecution is occurring condign as Porno para Ricardo is in the middle of recording its new record, which eliminates any possibility that this repressive escalation could be described as a ‘coincidence,’ " the statement said. "In Cuba, the spoken sound of the brave is silenced by the regime, which doesn’t hesitate to use terror and force."

An authoritative at the state-run press office said Cuba had no comment onward the arrest.

Aguila, 39, is an outspoken critic of Cuba’s government. "Communism is a failure," he said in a 2007 interview with CNN. "A total failure. Please. Leftists of the world — improve your capitalism."

Dominguez said rulers said Aguila’s trial will take lend Thursday. Police told the group’s guitarist, Ciro Diaz, that Aguila faced a possible sentence of one to four years in jail.

The statement upon the body the band’s Web site said Aguila wasn’t feeling well — that he had inflammation in his lungs and was short of breath.

Cuba uses the charge of "dangerousness" to sue those whom decisions believe are likely to commit crimes. Under Cuba’s penal code, habitual drunkenness and anti-social behavior are signs of a "state of dangerousness."

In its early years, Porno para Ricardo was featured steady Cuban television, but as Aguila’s lyrics grew bolder, the group was banned from playing in public. With the take part with of a friend outside the country, the band state in language its songs on the Internet. Its CDs are distributed only by hand in Cuba.

In 2003, Aguila was jailed on deaden with narcotics charges in what he said was an attempt to silence him. He said a woman working for police posed as a fan and baited him into giving her amphetamines.

He admitted to CNN that he gave her two pills, but he called it entrapment.

Following his time in house of correction, Aguila’s lyrics grew more political. In one song, he sings, "I’ve lost my fear, I’ve already been a prisoner I’ve only got a few bones left, from up here the tyrant is watching you, you’re playing his game so that he’ll oppress us."