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.'"

Comments

Re:Retail Employees with Email?

[LWATCDR]

Not all retail workers are short time employees. At my local Publix I see the some of the same people year after year. Then again they offer benefits and tend to treat the employees pretty well from what I hear.
Email is useful even for a casher. They check it from home and get their schedule, information on company events, and so on.
They my not use it at the store but they may still use it.

Not at P&G

[labrite]

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.

I wish

[paulm]

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.

Been using the free version for months

[kvsnut]

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.

Re:Exchange yes, Office no

[Coryoth]

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.

That really depends on your needs. I know of some small offices that have relatively light office application needs and would be just fine replacing MS Office with Google Apps. For any major company it is clearly a no go because Google Apps just doesn't have all the required functionality. Indeed most of MS Office's market won't be able to make the switch. MS Office has a very big market though, and a lot of users simply don't need all the functionality it offers. Those that can get by with Google Apps instead may be a very small percentage of the MS Office market, but they may still be reasonably large numbers in absolute terms.