Microsoft's apprehension is understandable. The software giant has been winning and enterprises to use its BPOS suite of cloud services for e-mail, collaboration and productivity apps (now called ). But in December, for a whopper contract with the GSA for $6.7 million over five years to migrate 17,000 government employees off different versions of IBM's Lotus Notes and Domino software to Google Apps.

Additionally, Google has landed contracts with state government agencies such as the and in November against the U.S. Department of the Interior, claiming that the DOI's bidding process for a contract worth $49.3 million over five years unfairly benefited Microsoft.

So needless to say, there's a cloud war underway between these tech giants and Google is winning a surprising amount of government deals. Can enterprises be far behind?

Markezich's blog post deliberately targets Google as he lists five questions CIOs should ask when negotiating with Google on its cloud services.

Do you have a proven track record?