Google Apps Slow to Replace Competition

ericatcw brings us a Computerworld article about how businesses are still hesitant to switch to Google Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office. While a Google spokesman claims "millions of active users", only "several thousand organizations" have paid for the Premier service, which was launched earlier this year. From Computerworld: "'If we deploy it correctly, Google Docs can replace some [of] our Office apps -- but not all of them,' said Les Sease, IT director of Prudential Carolina Real Estate in North Charleston, South Carolina. Sease would like to switch everyone over completely to Google Apps. But first he would like to see better synchronization between Google Apps and mobile devices, shared online file storage similar to that of Apple Inc.'s .Mac, as well as a simple desktop publishing tool similar to Microsoft Publisher."

Comments

this doesn't surprise me

[mattb112885]

This doesn't surprise me, there are some practical issues with having all your office work done online, such as the fact that if your internet crashes, you can't do anything. On the other hand, people trying to deal with compatibility issues between operating systems probably enjoy this a lot more...

Email good Spreadsheets crap

[Belteshazzar]

I converted a small office to google apps. The email server service is brilliant as is it's filtering, start page and UI. But the purported 'spreadsheet' functionality is utterly unusable imo.

Re:bad idea

[Aladrin]

Assuming that they can, they would. These days, you can't always assume these things.

Any good manager knows this: Don't hand vital parts of your business to someone else unless you have a backup plan. What's the backup plan in the case of Google being inaccessible? I see that there's a utility called 'gdatacopier' that can help with it, but that's 1 more thing to go wrong. With OpenOffice (or even Microsoft Office) you aren't at risk of losing your documents overnight. You also aren't at risk of a bug (or misconfiguration) exposing all of your documents to the internet.

From a business standpoint, Google Documents is a pain in the butt. Especially if your internet access is as precarious as ours.

Not that it doesn't have its good points... I use it for personal documents to take notes and make plans. I used to use a wiki, but I like this better. I just don't put anything mission-critical on it.