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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.'"
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...
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.
Let us take for example the vendor lock and switching costs. You can get decent oil change for your car for 20$. 10$ if you really clip coupons and are willing to let Joe's QuickLube to do it. And most car dealers charge 30$ for the very same service. Still there are millions of car owners who would happily pay 30$ to the dealer willingly.
Now take a look at how difficult it is to use a competing product instead of Microsoft. The switching costs are high and there is very heavy vendor lock. In 5 years, the marketplace might become more level. Finally the corporations might start demanding true interoperability. MS might lose market share. From 90% share in Office and 80-85% share in browsers and 95% share in computers, it might go down. How low will it go, I cant guess. May be to 50%. May be to 33%. The profitability also might suffer. But after all is said and done, MS will still have decent market share and a decent profit making business. Look around, IBM is still around, isn't it? It was the IBM dinosaur around which nimble Microsoft ran circles around. 10 years from now there will be three dinosaurs, IBM, MSFT and GOOG. And there will be another nimble player.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
This service has been available (in beta, for free) for probably a year now, so [Google] aren't claiming that 100, 000 companies switched in a day.
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.
Half of all employees don't have email? I'm thinking if they've made it this far along without it, they probably don't need it...
:)
Does the checkout girl at the grocery store need email?
How about the house painter?
Or the guy that tears tickets in half at the movie theater?
Is that the target market? I'm sure Microsoft is quaking in their boots about the prospect that they missed out on getting McDonalds to shell out for Exchange licenses for all their employees...
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.
This is exactly the point I was trying to allude to in an earlier post I made when I mentioned Excel's formula language. In any large enough organization, there is likely enough business intelligence coded into Excel spreadsheets by people who no longer work there that trying to convert all of it onto another platform would be ridiculous.
I've seen the argument that a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, and if you're starting from scratch, I think that is true. But a Google spreadsheet is not the same as a 20 page, fully formulated, linked to external datasources (via ODBC, SQL on the backend anyone?) Excel monster. And speaking of which, what do you do if you're using Google apps and you want to link to external data in say, an SQL server? Excel has great built in wizards that will link to just about any data source imaginable. Is Google going to port all of my financial data over there for me so that I can "access it from anywhere?"
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.