Google Apps Premier Edition Launches

prostoalex writes "Google Apps is adding a premium offering: a custom 10-GB Gmail box, Google Calendar, GTalk instant messenger, Writely, Google Pages, Google Custom home page iGoogle and Google SpreadSheets for $50 a year per employee. The NYTimes provides some details on competitive pricing: 'By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange,... in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner.' Boston.com quotes an analyst for Nucleus Research on Google's ease-of-use: '"What we see in the Google Apps is a real focus on making them easy to use and intuitive," she said. "And that's something that Microsoft has been unable to do in all of its years with Office."' But the same analyst is bearish on Google Apps' shortcomings relative to the mature Microsoft desktop products: 'Right now Google's going to give companies a better ability to negotiate with Microsoft.'"

Comments

Fair Comparison?

[AKAImBatman]

[Google Office Stuff] for $50 a year per employee. By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange

Is that really a fair comparison, though? Google's email is great, but their Spreadsheet and Word Processor solutions are nowhere near as sophisticated as MS Office. And in an office environment, many of those differences do matter.

I haven't played with Google Calendar enough, but would it be a workable replacement for the Outlook calendar? i.e. Can you schedule meetings with a simple invite rather than telling everyone to put it on their calendar? Can other users see your unavailable periods when scheduling?

I hate to give Microsoft props, but there are features that are critical to the office use of software. If Google doesn't provide those features, they will not be able to compete at all. Which means that the supposed "leverage" with Microsoft would be nothing more than hogwash.

Re:Instant messenger?

[TrippTDF]

We use a Jabber-based system at my office. If you are not on it at all times, the boss gets pissy. It's the primary way we communicate in-office. We mostly use it to send links to folders on the file server, or to get quick responses to questions.

Re:obvious flaw?

[Bert64]

I would use this, if google offered me the facility to install these apps on a server under my control.
In a large office with hundreds of users, having all that traffic heading out through the wan interface would be prohibitive, it would be much easier to only have the few off-site workers traffic heading in through the wan interface instead.

Re:Needs to be an appliance

[Xugumad]

Agree, absolutely. Love the software, but like hell are we hosting key services elsewhere. With Google hosting the apps, if we lose Internet access, and we might as well close up and go home.

Personally, I'm amazed there isn't an appliance version of GMail available yet. Although I suppose they'd have to get it out of beta first...

Welcome back to 1975

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome back to 1975, where mainframes and 'pay as you go' computing ruled the day.

The Personal Computer, if google/microsoft have their way, will cease to exist. Welcome back the dumb terminal.

Let google/microsoft store all your data, for a low monthly fee.

Use all your favorite applications, for a low monthly fee.

It's the old micropayment bullshit, disguised as a new 'pay as you go' initiative. Same shit, different smell.

1975 called, it wants its 'micropayment' system back.