Slashdot Mirror
Google Apps Premier Edition Launches, Widely Used
Tookis writes "Google's online productivity suite (Google Apps) has already replaced Microsoft products at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises. Additionally, it's been deployed for serious work-related projects at two of the largest companies in the world. Product manager for Google Enterprise Kevin Gough was quick to point out that although the premier edition of Google Apps only just launched, it's already been adopted by companies like GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. He goes on to describe the role of Apps: to augment, not necessarily replace existing IT solutions. Just the same, he says, the role of Apps can be powerful where traditional services may be too expensive. Says Gough, 'There's a large segment that's under-served by today's productivity tools. Production workers and retail employees for instance. 48% of all employees actually don't even have an email address. That's because the cost of hardware, software and maintenance has made it prohibitively expensive to provide email to employees.'"
Looks like client-server was a fad. The terminal is back, only now the mainframe is at another company and the terminal is called browser.
Somehow, I'm having issue believing that number. 100,000? Maybe 100,000 companies have users that are using gmail accounts, but I just don't buy that 100,000 real businesses have switched over already, unless Jim-bob in his basement counts as a business...
I call bullshit on the 100,000 number. This has mediaHypeFUD written all over it.
GE, a government contractor, will not allow a 3rd-party to have any sort of access to project documentation. Neither will GM, BoA, or the rest of the fortune 1000.
Google apps has its place, but it is not in any "enterprise" i've ever worked in.
Website Hosting
Call me skeptical, but this sounds like 100% bullshit. Hundreds of thousands of companies have, in the past day and a half, switched their entire office infrastructure to a web-based one? Not likely.
I don't respond to AC's.
Google Apps seems like a really great idea for Universities. We spend SO much money on MS Office and related products. Graduate Students in my department had to share computers (6 to a PC) until this summer. Now we have crippled dell's which can barely run powerpoint, or do any significant work in Photoshop.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
Production workers and retail employees for instance. 48% of all employees actually don't even have an email address. That's because the cost of hardware, software and maintenance has made it prohibitively expensive to provide email to employees.
Or maybe, just maybe, 48% of all employees don't need email to get their jobs done. I know, it sounds heretical, but let's be honest, does K-Fed really need email to operate that McDonald's cash register? Nah, I didn't think so either.
100,000 user ids have been sold? Or 100,000 companies each with multiple user ids sold? I am guessing it is the former. These are the low hanging fruits folks. Microsoft has actively pushed bulk and unlimited licensing to most of its big customers. If their company already has unlimited number of MSOffice licenses, you need to provide a pretty powerful reason for them to start paying 50$ per user per year. Right now I dont see the compelling business reason to do so.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why would you want your retail employees to have email? Is it really necessary for the cashier at Wal*Mart to have their own email address when they're probably only going to work there for a few months?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Can't wait to see what happens when the 1st security breach happens and companies that THOUGHT they were storing their documents online safely, actually find their documents floating across the internet. Will kind of put a damper on this whole online storage thing. Think hackers aren't gonna sink their teeth into this????
Bottom line, real companies don't want their confidential documents floating around willy-nilly in the "cloud". And to have 2 systems (one desktop based for confidential, and "cloud" based for non-confidential) is just too much hastle to have to remember and maintain.
My one primary concern about data services like this that rely on another company storing your businesses data and communications off-site under their control is what recourse does one have for loss of data? Is Google guaranteeing their storage? If so, how is the guarantee backed up (so to speak)?
It's all that money flowing back out from Microsoft's Orifice.
MS is in a vice no doubt. Isn't it already now when Ballmer said that "MS would catch up to Google in six months?" heheh.
And they're stepping up the "veiled threats" against open source software.
Oh, I give it about 3 to 5 years before MS goes superSCOva.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Does this come standard on Vista? Oh I hope so!
Nothing witty
I have a few contacts at P&G having worked there before, and a quick survey of them shows noone has even heard of P&G testing this. Companies like P&G and GE have their software go through fairly extensive testing before releasing it in the company. The amount of spreadsheets that would have to be converted would be impossible to fix and it would place the documents out of P&G hands, something they would never allow to happen.
Google Apps seems like a really great idea
-----
Camila17
everything about me, and more at radio internetowe
I'm employed in a company that switched to Google Apps for Domains, and it works great. But it replaces our old e-mail service.
The calendar part is getting better and better, especially the arrival of syncmycal has improved integration with MS Outlook, but it surely doesn't replace it, yet, because Google Calendar cannot sync with everything, yet.
We're looking forward to use docs and spreadsheets, but it's still just an add-on to our existing in-house software.
Will probably be a hit among smaller companies that can stand the fact that their data will be stored elsewhere, and possible never be deleted.
As I see that it would be hard for Enterprises, of any moderate size, to store any remotly sensitive data on googles disks. In their case it would mostly be used as a way to work together, and then one might ask if gotomeeting or any other internet meeting service + openoffice/office/staroffice is a better solution. I guess time will tell...
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
The thing that really still stops me from wanting to adopt these is the fact that Google content-scans the files. Even if they say they're not doing anything other than indexing my own content for my own use, it gives me the heebie jeebies to think of my private content that far out of my control.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/22/143025 6
I agree. It's just like IBM said about the PC, that it wouldn't make a lot of money, that it didn't matter what operating system they used, and if that little company wanted to license the OS instead of selling it outright, what's the big deal.
And if that isn't enough proof, it's like those audiophiles said about the LP record. It sounds SO MUCH better than compact discs and it's not like people will ever put music on their computers.
I also remember someone saying that the iron horse would never outrun the real horse...
Duh.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Google's online productivity suite (Google Apps) has already replaced Microsoft products at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises.
Uh, replaced? I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies are now exclusively using Google Apps. I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies even deployed Google Apps company-wide. I'd be astounded if that statistic was anything more than someone looking at the weblogs for Google Apps, seeing 100,000 unique .com domains, and concluding they had 100,000 companies using their product. It's probably one or two people at each company, logging in from work to their gmail account, and working on their resume in Google Apps.
Check out this cheesy bit of spin:
Additionally, it's been deployed for serious work-related projects at two of the largest companies in the world.
That's a relief. The industry was worried it was being used for managing the office football pool.
Please help metamoderate.
I am actively advocating Google Apps for Your Domain in my company as a replacement for our aging Groupwise mail and calendar system, rather than going for a far more expensive Exchange based solution.
However, I wouldn't dream of (or rather I would dream of it, but then daytime reality kicks in) suggesting Google Apps as a replacement for MS Office. Not at this point.
I could easily imagine that the numbers in the article refers to how many Google Apps for Your Domain clients they have (most of which are free), but almost all of those will be as a Exchange replcement, not Office.
You Linux freaks can foam at the mouth trying to convince anyone that Linux + open office will be widely adopted by corporates. People that actually work in corporates and support infrastructure, will never let that amateur junk in.
Some of us linux freaks don't care whether corporates adopt it or not. I'm a little curious about the source of your hostility though.. what did oss do to get your panties in such a bunch?
I seriously doubt any company trying this as a free trial has "completly replaced" MS products with Google Apps.
No, but that does not mean there's not room for significant market share. In a world where half of employees don't have a company email address, you might imagine more than half of employees don't have a company provided productivity suit. That means those employees have no effective and reliable way to communicate electronically. You can't get them the word and they can't tell you what they know - and that's more than half of the people who work for and with you!
This is a double whammy for M$. It's not just market share they can't fill, it's a serious threat to the market share they already have. If Google makes these applications save out and email their work in ODF, M$ had better work with ODF or risk losing the other half of the market to Open Office even faster then they are. M$ has always depended on secret formats and "network effect" to push their expensive crap out. Cheap well adopted alternatives of any type will break that and force M$ to compete on merit instead of inertia.
Hasta la Vista, M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Please fix you content network adword scam first....
I use LaTeX for pretty much all my document needs so I don't have a real vested interest in OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office, but it really isn't fair to call OO amateur. It did start life as a commerical product. And is the opposite of commercial really amateur? gcc is not a commercial compiler, but it certainly not amateur and has been used in lots of serious situations.
maybe, 48% of all employees don't need email to get their jobs done. I know, it sounds heretical, but let's be honest, does K-Fed really need email to operate that McDonald's cash register? Nah, I didn't think so either.
I can't even begin to imagine how much McD spends printing propaganda and instructions for every single employee they have. There's got to be a better way than that. Where there's money, people will find a way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I used to be very excited about this idea. I only have windows boxes around for when I need to run office, usually for excel. OpenOffice does a damn good job nowadays, but there are still some things that have issues.
I was using the google aps for a while and was very happy about the prospect. However, on many occasions, right when I really needed to get at something, google aps were simply broken. I'm sure you've seen gmail get into a confused state where you cannot log in. This usually results in you having to clear your browser cache and delete all cookies, though this doesn't always work. Google makes some change somewhere, and then after a while they figure it out and fix it. But they never tell you when to expect downtime. Google just rolls out new code whenever they feel like it and you wind up suffering.
Until they start to run their services more like a production IT shop, I can't see how anyone can run a business on it.
Mark me as troll all you want, but I have been working in real corporations with real people for 7 years now. I know what real people want, and that is Windows OS with Office. This may change in 10 years as new generations step up to the work force, but today there is no place for Linux or Google in the enterprise for end users. The only thing worthy that Google had until this point is Google Earth and Desktop Search. New windows desktop search rocks the world and has a much nicer user experience, and give me http://maps.live.com/ anytime.
To continue your analogy, the Open Office - on line services vice works so much nicer because it has teeth that mate perfectly, open standards. Half of employees don't have email, so more than half don't have productivity software. What company wants to ignore half of their workforce? A company that only embraces half of the vice will still be doing that because M$ is going to fight ODF until they start losing serious market share, like they did ... today! Once they embrace real standards, they will reduced to one of many options everyone has to chose from. The end of the monopoly is here.
Hasta la vista, M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
the more interesting thing is that all the documents are stored on Google's servers, where it can be searched! Any ideas will become Google's ideas, they have the money and the smart people to make things work. And that whole "Don't do evil" is out the window. Don't be fooled by Google, they are as ruthless as Micro$oft.
Find something that works for you and your company, but don't ever trust someone else with your data - it is your's isn't it?
You actually remember them saying it?
I used it first time and you can't even plot a graph. Why would someone use this?
Microsoft is quaking in their boots about the prospect that they missed out on getting McDonald`s to shell out for Exchange licenses for all their employees... :)
They should be. The M$ solution is too expensive, that's true, but that does not mean there's not a demand. Google filling that demand on the cheap is going to force open standards at last and that will make everything M$ now makes money on into a commodity.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Right, so all those thousands of corporations that do use Linux are imaginary corporations employing imaginary people?
I've been using the free version for months for my small business and it has been awesome. We are a growing company and I think the free version will suite our needs for many years. There are some additional features I'd like to see but they keep on adding more so I expect them in the near future.
We have two locations and this helps bridge the gap between the offices ( I also use Hamachi for remote connectivity)
So far we use gmail, cal and just starting to use docs and spreadsheets.
They're claiming 100,000 "completely replaced" MS products.
Is it so hard to believe that 100,000 businesses decided to step off the upgrade train? Users who have been riding that train for a while are tired of always ending up in the same place. No one is going to buy Office 2007 for new features, they are going to buy it because they are afraid of not being able to use the new M$ format. Enough people are realizing that M$ is an expensive ride to nowhere and that other companies can do the same thing for less.
I also am almost completely sure this is a load of crap.
You will often find that where M$ likes to cram your head. Choo choo!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
OSS is clunky, junky, unpatched, non-integrated smorgasbord of incompatible offerings.
I used to enjoy "the idea" of oss, but over the years, I realized that ideas and ideals is one thing, but if you want a powerful, easy to use, secure systems for average end user, Microsoft is the ONLY way to go and will be for a very long time.
Microsoft is the company that has best resources and well-paid talent. Microsoft is a leader in R&D (don't take my word for it, do your own research, check out ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/ for example) so on and so forth. I don't have time to waist convincing amateurs here of anything.
OK, but are you sure that they really want Win + MS Office, or would they be happy with something that offered the same functionality and a familiar interface (no steep learning curve)? Sure they would. There's a lot of debate here about Linux etc. being too 'hard' for the non-geek user - from my direct experince, it's a valid point. However, this is less applicable in a 'big company' environment where most PCs are (or should be) pre-configured and then locked down. I use, and have installed for clients, both XP with Office and *nix with OO. Once you've got things setup OK, (takes similar time with both) there's little difference in training and support. People familiar with Office can move to OO quickly. Also, when the function is compelling enough, and the learning experience not too tough, non tech-professionals can adopt new functions & applications quickly. Do you think that all the people using MySpace, YouTube, Flickr etc. are all geeks? For a more 'serious' application, what about salesforce.com? Many of the posters here seem to want to dump this debate into the same old black/white right/wrong box. ONE of them is more insightful - this stuff is complementary, not a return to the old 'dumb terminal' days, just another possibility to be evaluated and used where appropriate.
I use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and now MOSS 2007. SharePoint rocks!
Wow, I didn't realize Steve Ballmer posted on Slashdot! *ducks flying chair*
with Google Spreadsheets is that theres a 500KB size limit on pre existing documents - every spreadsheet I have around here exceeds that limit. From what I can see, Google Spreadsheet is worth using, I jsut cant use it.
Anyone know if they have removed this size limit in the Google Apps version, because they certainly havent removed it in the free version.
Technologies are growing more and more complex these days, and no one but Microsoft makes them easy to use and learn FAST.So, if you are an IT worker, you can easily juggle many things at the same time. This is a key point.
You might want to tell Peugot that, as theyre rolling out 20k _desktops_ with SUSE on, and you also might want to email the city of Munich, they are migrating to Debian. At least you should have a quick chat with these people: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/02/21/ 221941/kingfisher-migrates-to-red-hat-linux.htm (I know you said end users, I just could not resist).
-- Linux user #369862
It's only 4 digits!! That's seriously OLD. Well, in Internet years, anyway.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
it's complete and absolute BS for one reason only: SOX compliance. Anyone running their business off of google apps is just begging to be run out of business by the government. There is absolutely no way, with the way google runs their apps, that you could ever meet security or retention requirements for SOX compliance.
Our entire school dropped Office for OpenOffice and haven't missed a beat. The students like that the program gets upgraded regularly. The staff likes that it works. The business folks like the price.
Right now we're switching most of the kids school work to Google Docs because it's just so much easier to have access to the files everywhere.
Here's the thing though: this works for us. The problem that I'm having with your comments is that you seem to know the ONE TRUE WAY that is right for all people. I'm typing on the last PC I'll ever buy. My next computers will be Macs. Why? I like them. They work. And the whole software issue is becoming moot with all the services online. So I'm saying, ease up there, Skippy. You've got your way, other people have their ways.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
NPR talked a bit about this last night, and Microsoft Office has a 350M user base, so Google's 100k of converts is just 0.03%. There are always a portion of any company's customers that are dissatisfied and will try something else; Google just cherry picked the easy ones and the rest are not going to come that easy.
I For example, I will not buy a mac anytime soon, they are toy computers. My opinion may change in the future, as I am always looking for a bettre thing.
Cool. Thanks for taking the criticism the way it was intended. As for the Mac being a toy computer, that's part of the reason I want to get one. The other is that the keyboards on the MacBooks are so good for typing and that's most of what I do.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
It doesn't seem that you had any time to waste on developing a third grade spelling equivalency either.
I have seen pleanty of "_insert country, company name here_ steping-away-from-linux" news right here on Slashdot.
You can roll out anything you want, it is a total-cost-of-ownership that will be deciding factor, long term.
Microsoft products cost money, because they are worth every penny.
And if you were around in the early 1990's when Windows 3.1 was relesed, you'd be sticking with DOS, Geoworks, and CP/M.
I'll give you that large companies are inherently more conservative when it comes to swtiching, but at my Fortune 25 company, the number of Google Apps users have increased over the past 6 months from yours truly to about 15% as part of the pilot project. All with IT approval, which is important.
Don't let the world pass you by.
You seem to believe that SUSE and RHEL are gratis, they aren't.
-- Linux user #369862
Having seen the power, ease, flexibility, extensibility, integration of these products I am amazed, and I see a clear winners - Rightfully so. Microsoft spends billions on research and has best brains in the industry, all because they want end-users to have a better computing experience and in doing so, keep them long-term, happy customers.
I have been using gmail since the early days and it is great, but have you seen new Live Mail, built in spell-checker, and all. MMM mmm mmm good!
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Ballmer, but your wife is on line 1. Something about a chair and an iPod?
I wouldn't want this to be where all of my business resides, but as an adjunct service, it's great. I can create (or import) a document, and access that document from anywhere with a good internet connection. Browser independence is a plus. That means if I'm in somebody elses office, we can collaborate.
I wonder how easy it will be to move these documents from Google to my computer and back? That's what would make it a good tool. I also wonder what format options I might have. Time will tell. I use Open Office, Word Perfect, Abi Word and MS Word (97, 2000 and XP) on different machines. Are all those formats supported? If so, it'll fill a need for me right now. Bye Bye Sneaker Net.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
I scanned the comments, I scanned the website, but I was unable to find a figure. What does Google Apps cost now? For private people, for small businesses?
Offtopic: Can you manage several domains under the same setup? I mean, what if I want to use gmail to host mail on, say, three domains. user@dom_a.com should be the same as user@dom_b.com and user@dom_c.com - Is that doable now?
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Powerful, easy to use, secure? The only thing Microsoft has for the average end user is "easy to use", at the cost of security I might add. You should take your own advice and do your own research from sources that aren't from microsoft.
Unless all the SME's are one man operations.
KFED doesn't have to work at Mickey D's, cause he done gave Britney the "special sauce" twice over at least!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Maybe Graduate Students shouldn't be Photoshopping their work, eh?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yes, I love Google Calendar, but I am also forced to use Outlook at work for scheduling as well. There is still one basic feature that I can do with ease in Outlook that I have yet to figure out how to do in Google, and I am hoping someone can clue me in. And that feature is the ability to simply hold down Ctrl and drag an entry to a new day and make a copy of the entry there on that day. In Outlook it is quick and intuitive and I have yet to figure out how to do it in Google.
Any suggestions on quickly making event copies?
Nevermore.
2. I can see your point that Google apps may not be compatible with SOX, but this would matter only to publicly traded companies.
3. You haven't been paying attention to the news. I've seen multiple stories about SOX causing many small publicly traded companies to delist from the stock market and go private, and how it's causing businesses to skip the US stock markets when it comes time for them to do their IPO. In other words, yes, there's a general feeling that SOX is driving business away from the US. Here's an example article I found through a very quick search: Is SOX Driving Small Companies Overseas?
SOX seems to be too onerous on most companies, and only the largest ones can properly put up the effort to meet its requirements. I'm not an expert, so I'm going by what I've read and heard on the news, and by the huge amount of IT changes that SOX has caused at my work. I'm as anti-corporate as they come, and I can see that SOX is having some negative effects. I think he's right that something is going to change.
Yeah, I totally agree.
It's one thing to rely on a third party to handle, host, and process data for you. But at some point, is it really smart to let a person or company have that sort of leverage over you. What happens when Google ratchets up the price of getting to YOUR data?
Sure, Google is a relatively "reasonable" company today, but are you willing to bet your data on it staying that way forever? Not I. Especially when the stakes are high.
Mind you, if Google offered some way to make a local backup that was is something approaching an open standard, e.g. a pile of XML files, then I'd probably be OK with it.
who really believed that "do no evil" lie, anyway.
i know i never did, and this kin dof lying is why.
i've been wrong before, but this wasn't one of those times.
But seriously, the 100,000 is a total joke. I challenge Google to actually show how they came up with that number and give the names of the companies. I'm sure they wouldn't, citing "confidentiality"...funny, coming from Goggle.
What google have in economic terms done is to create a large segment in the advertising market, a bit like free TV with adverts. They can keep adding new toys to generate the advertising revenue, but it's not the same thing as selling software. As far as selling apps are concerned, this offering is weak. They have higher costs than Microsoft because it's a hosted service. Hosting is a low return capital intensive business, not a money spinner. It only works if you are hosting something new and different. There is not a lot new about cut-down Office-type applications. Sure there's a market, but it's for people who don't really want to pay. I'm not sure the hosting part of the offering really works. What could be really interesting is an appliance with these apps and a bit of storage. You could get an appliance like that for a few hundred dollars and provide the service to 20, 50 people with no Windows Server or Exchange Server CALS; and not even a Windows desktop. Now that would be interesting.
I still dont understand why everybody compares Google Apps to MS Office. Is it not more a MS Exchange replacement. My MS Office (including Outlook) works fine WITH (not against) Google Apps. My bet is Google Apps will move towards file synchronization... and you will be able to do that through the API.... and trhe API is the key.. not the AJAX interface. for example we are developing an FREE open source "business application platform" (think salesforce.com). Our first application is working tightly integrated with GOOGLE APPS. (applicationexchange.com)