With Labor Day done and dusted it’s time to get back to work. And Google Inc. has just the tool for the job.

The web giant has just announced a complete branding revamp for its enterprise unit, which will henceforth be known as “Google for Work”.

What that means is the enterprise version of each of Google’s services will get the same “for Work” tag added to the end of its name. So Gmail enterprise version is now “Gmail for Work”, while Google Drive becomes “Drive for Work”.

The rebranding is an effort to encourage more businesses, particularly smaller ones, to use Google’s apps and services. Amit Singh, president of Google’s enterprise division, said the “enterprise” tag could sometimes be misleading.

“The word ‘enterprise’ starts to mean different things,” he explained. “Many things that are associated with ‘enterprise’ are not what we do. Over time that dissonance has gotten bigger.”

Singh explained that when people hear the word “enterprise”, they automatically think of giant coroporations. But Google wants people to known that its apps and services can be used by any business, large or small.

The move is an indication that Google is stepping up its enterprise ‘work’ efforts as its rivals make their own land grab. Recently, Apple penned a deal with IBM to collaborate on enterprise apps for its iPhones and iPads. The deal will also see IBM’s cloud services optimized to run on Apple’s iOS software, while IBM’s 100,000 strong army of consultants will help to push Apple’s products to their corporate clients.

Google hasn’t been sat idly by however, for its rumored to be exploring a similar partnership with Hewlett-Packard Company. The plan is for Google to expand its Google Now voice recognition software to search through reams of corporate data. In this case, HP is a valuable partner due to huge number of corporate customers.

Google says that its business software, which includes “for Work” versions of Gmail and Drive, is used by over five million businesses around the world. Singh claimed that it counts 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies as active, paying customers, though he refused to say which services they were using.

But the truth is that Google isn’t nearly as successful in the enterprise as it would like to be. In its last quarter, the company reported almost $16 billion in sales. However, Google’s “other revenue”, which includes its enterprise business, made just $1.6 billion. While that figure isn’t to be sneered at, bear in mind that it also includes profits from other, more popular businesses like its Google Play store.

photo credit: {Flixelpix} David via photopin cc