Today, -- which began life as "Gmail For Your Domain" -- is giving Google a small foothold in the enterprise IT world, and sparking a fierce rivalry with Microsoft.

But in 2004, Sheth's early attempts to bring Gmail into the enterprise were stymied, as Google's trinity of leaders in Page, Brin and Schmidt challenged him to come up with something better.

"At the time I was soundly rejected," Sheth said during an interview in mid-June at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. "Because at the time we were proposing the idea of bringing Gmail into an appliance and have it be an on-premise solution for businesses. They rightly pointed out that we could do that, but we're not fully taking advantage of everything we have here at Google. And at that time, too, the idea of a was very much not on the minds of any CIO anywhere."

Even before joining Google, Sheth worked on some of the most well-known products in the IT landscape, both on the consumer and enterprise side.