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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.'"
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought that everyone except Google believes GChat to be a great time-waster, not something you'd offer to your corporate clients to increase productivity at work...?
Needing to be connected to the web sucks for those who travel.
Or am I the only one to have thought of that?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I use the google apps at home, even though I have a licensed copy of office, cause I like to access it easily from work and home.. However, the one very limiting factor is the spreadsheets won't connect to databases. Lots of businesses have excel doing simple DB reporting, and this just won't work with the spreadsheet app. (yet??)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
From a marketing standpoint, this initially looks to be pretty strong. Google is hitting the white space, but I still have to question it - is the white space there because nobody moved into it or is there because it represents a non-viable product mix?
I once heard networking defined as being in a room, having your data located 200 feet down the hallway and believing that it is a good thing. I think the ASP model is flawed in providing the needs for large organizations. There are issues surrounding security of data and uptime availability that probably outweigh the cost savings. Security is huge, especially given Google's stated mission to make ALL information available to the world. Do I want to give them my confidential sales information? Not.
The cost savings isn't what its cracked up to be either, since the cost is $50 per employee, per year. It seems like Microsoft is about 4-5 years between major releases, so your cost is $200-$250 per seat for 4-5 years.
Overall, I'll pass for now.
My company has been interested in Google Apps for a while, but we won't touch it until we can buy an Google Apps appliance machine and install it in our own facility.
We're not holding our breath.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
"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."
It's easy to make something easy and intuitive when they have almost no capability. Let's see Google make it a lot easier and intuitive AND have the same functionality.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Why would a company entrust Google with all their corporate emails, and many of their files as well?
Make a difference: move to a swing state.
The people that really need to watch out are Lotus. I've been admining a Domino server for about 8 years now and let me tell you, it's the second biggest pain in the ass that I have to deal with. Google's solution would fully replace Lotus for all the things we use it for and actually do it better.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
For what you get, and for everything that you *don't* have to buy, that's idiotically cheap.
> Great, just what the working world needs, more useless web-based apps. Lose internet connectivity, and it all goes to
> even further waste.
Think ahead. The same could have been said when people moved from mechanical typewriters to electrical typewriters. Today you simply don't expect power outages for hours. The internet will move into that direction simply because it is indispensable for more and more companies.
Back when we where considering going from Exchange 5.5 to 2003 ( a huge pain in the butt ) I considered moving us to an online alternative. intranets.com now WebOffice ( webex umbrella ) provided somewhat of an alternative at that point. Now they are even better that they offer email hosting, with your domain not "gmail.com".
Several factors stopped me from being able to make that jump.
1) Legacy...everyone was using Exchange and we had tons of email in it that would be a pain to copy into folders.
2) Regulation. How does google keep all company emails in one place that can be archived and backed up. I'm sure Google won't loose someone's email anytime soon ( less likely then us ), but how do you document their backup procedures.
3) Current email addresses. No one wanted to give them up.
4) Internet bandwidth and reliance. People tend to think of the internet like electricity, but we are not there yet. It is funny that I get a faster connection at my house with a cable modem then our dual t1s provide...and a lot cheaper. This is another post, but unless you are in a big data center getting a decent sized pipe at a reasonable price is still overpriced.
5) Gateway level controls. We wanted to see every email that came in. We run a spam firewall, but if it blocks errantly we have a log. If Google blocks and email?
6) Customer support emails. We have tons of email addresses for our clients/etc that would probably be a pain to setup.
7) Fax support. We have to integrate with a fax server...yep it sucks.
8) Public folders ( ie email boxes accessible by more then one person )...ties in with 6.
To name a few.
If I was starting up a small software company I'd be all over this. As far as for enterprise uses...I think Google has a long road ahead of them...but they are speeding car.
True, but I wonder how long it will be before Google provides an appliance like their search one to provide this, while keeping everything inside the company firewall...
Random Musings
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
Google Documents is still very much in it's infancy as well, and not at all ready for wide-spread business use. I was stunned when i tried it out last week that there are a ton of warnings when trying to do something as simple as Find and Replace.
Among other things, that very basic and relied-upon feature is listed as "Experimental," it doesn't offer a "Replace" option, but only a "Replace All" and it is not able to be Un-Done.
That told me volumes about just how far this application has to go.
Just because it's by far the best web-based document editor in existence doesn't mean it's ready to compete head to head with Word.
I think it's great for personal use, especially for people like me who use GMail, but it's just not something I'd be ready to run a business on.
and you would overhear many MS employees' lunch meetings around here. As early as 3-4 years ago, there was a lot of buzz about starting projects like what Google's doing now. The "Live" initiative will supposedly eventually convince people to submit micro-payments to use Office products. ($0.25 per Word doc creation, $0.50 per printing, etc.) The MS people who were talking about this acted like it was the best thing since sliced bread and that it will cure cancer. It'll probably be deployed around 2015.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Some businesses don't have an IT person to set it all up and smaller businesses have a MCP (or less) who is clueless about Linux. Then there is administration, security issues, etc... In the end the TOC is much less using Google. There are other posts which outline the flaws in using google, but it really just depends on the needs of the company. It isn't even close to enterprise worthy, but most businesses are small not enterprise.
Google is using Microsoft's own tactic against them--use one strong revenue stream to subsidize aggressive underselling in another. Almost all of Microsoft's profit comes from their Windows/Office/Exchange product lines--they then use this profit to offset heavy losses as they attack new markets (like--Internet advertising). Google is simply executing the reverse--using their strong ad revenue to subsidize an attack on Microsoft's office turf. Even if few companies actually sign on with Google, they're all going to use Google's offering to negotiate lower pricing with Microsoft, thereby hurting a key revenue stream--mission accomplished.
Microsoft's battle against GO Penpoint is instructive because it's well documented from both sides. The GO side is covered in the famous book Startup, and the Microsoft side is covered in the book Barbarians Led by Bill Gates. In that book the GO chapter ends with the death of Microsoft Pen Windows and a revelation from one of the managers--that the goal was not to sell Pen Windows, but simply to block GO's success in the marketplace---"Block the kick," not score the touchdown.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In this day and age of lawsuits and corporate rules and regulations I can't see any large company using hosted services where their data resides on other servers. That would open up a whole can of legal problems, especially if that data was compromised. Another example is say that Google kept backup tapes for 10 years, but company was policy was no backups for more than 6 months. A lawsuit comes along and the lawyer for the other side realizes you use Google and subpoeanas the backup tapes from Google and finds the evidence they want.
A couple of points:
- Even in large corporations there are different groups of users and some of those groups can *really* use a nice cheap lightweight corporate portal thingy with email & etc. Consider cable installers or repair technicians or any group of otherwise smart folks who aren't in an office all the time but also don't travel in airplanes as a primary part of their job.
- There are other really useful features that google can integrate into this offering that will make it stickier in the corporate market. Three immediately come to mind:
* wikis
* message boards
* project management tools (like basecamp)
maybe this is too specific, but I can't keep files on servers that aren't owned by my company. I am doing gov't contract work, and my company is required by law to be responsible for the security. Google apps would be great, but only if there were a box we could own that we could keep in a locked room and be responsible for it.
Here is where they just FAIL trapped in the warp of their own success not knowing the failure that waits for them behind the next door.
I like google, gmail, etc, etc., etc..
All I wanted was to get some extra space in my inbox since the free space isnt' enough for me..
To use this service you need to have a domain name...
I own serveral but I don't want my email @ my domain name
All of that is a minor point, just well something that I want...
Here is why they fail...
I can't contact them... there isn't an easy simple way to reach them and find out if there is an alternative..
When you click through into their help system you get into page after page of "try this and try that..."
It's one thing to offer free stuff for FREE and skimp on the help...
When your trying to sell something.. you need to be able to help people...
Not that my problem is such a big deal, but each group of people signing up will have their own problems, and the biggest one is that they can't get anyone on the phone or in email, without jumping through so many hoops, pages, forms and FAQs that well, it's like talking to a wall...
http://www.hawknest.com/
$200 a year is minimal if you are paying a (an extremely cheap) meatbag $35,000 a year. Any attempt at reducing the $200 has to be guaranteed to have only positive effects on productivity.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
gMail is pop. As slick as the interface is, I really like working with IMAP or even Exchange servers. It is nice for all of my devices to be in sync. I hate checking email on my phone, then getting back to gMail and everything I did is (to some extent) lost.
If gMail implements IMAP, *THEN* they will have a much more competitive offereing, at least on the email side of things.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
A few hundred bucks for software is nothing compared with having to hire an admin to take care of the stuff. Unless you have a good sized company with an existing IT staff, outsourcing this stuff is generally the safest and cheapest way to go.
I don't respond to AC's.
Face it, compared to IMAP, all webmail sucks, even Gmail. So far, there is no IMAP access to Gmail. My university considered moving mail to Gmail, but lack of IMAP access is a deal killer.
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.