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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.'"
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...
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.
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)?
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.
I think the GP is suggesting that companies that have sensitive data (whether to the companies bottom line or some secret formula) are not quickly going to float their data over the internet and hope that some other entity is going to treat that data as sensitive as in-house employees would. Data needs to be controlled AND managed. Some companies are going to be more restrictive with their data warehousing than others.
I seriously doubt pharmacological, banking, automotive, airline-manufacturing (whether civilian or defense) companies are going to put any data into a server that they do not directly have control over.
The reasons why are as varied as the industry, too. Criminal hacking aside, what if some power or cable company cuts the hard line, through accident or whatever, and the company can't retrieve their data? I'm sure you'd know right away about a more than a few IT job opportunities right away.
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...
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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?
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.
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.
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...
I used it first time and you can't even plot a graph. Why would someone use this?
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.
Very funny that this was brought up before...
Let's figure the cost of a printed page (offset, NOT laser) at half a cent. Maybe distribution and all that brings it up to a penny (we'll call it 5 cents PER PAGE to be on the absurdly high side). Figure that McDonalds gives each employee 20 pages of documents, that's 1 dollar per employee for all the communications they require to do their jobs.
Now figure a computer for $300, DSL for $40 per month.
Say there's 40 employees there that share the single computer. After 2 months, the cost of the DSL has outstripped the old distribution method. The computer isn't getting paid for, and in fact McDonalds now needs to hire an IT team to service the area (yes, it's google that runs the apps, but someones got to make sure the computers are running in the store), adding additional costs.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.