With all the hype surrounding Google applications, it is little wonder that a third-party ecosystem of independent software vendors is starting to emerge now that Google claims to have hundreds of thousands of paying customers.

One of the best examples of this is a company based in France that has developed a business intelligence application for the spreadsheet component of GoogleDocs. Called LiveDashBoard 4Team, the application was created by a company called Prelytis is available as a free service.

Customers can opt to purchase a version of the business intelligence software that they can run internally, so the free service is basically intended to expand market awareness of the Prelytis software. The commercial version, in contrast, can also be extended to work with other data sources, so for a lot of customers LiveDashBoard 4Team could be an interesting option because users could use it for free along side their online spreadsheets, while the company as a whole relied on an on-premise version for corporate applications.

Prelytis doesn't see itself as a competitor to SAP's Business Objects unit or IBM Cognos. Rather, the company says the average end user has desperate need for less complex business intelligence tools that don't require eight people in lab coats to set up.

Whatever your stand is on software-as-a-service in general and Google applications in particular, it's pretty clear that a new ecosystem of applications is developing around the Google cloud. And ultimately, the cloud that has the richest set of independent software partners is most likely the one that will carry the day when all is finally said and done.