Outlook Inertia the Main Factor Holding Business From Google Apps

Meshach writes "There's an interesting article in PC World claiming that the major factor preventing businesses from transferring their communication interface from Outlook to Google Apps is employees' unwillingness to give up a tool that's so familiar. Basically, Google is underestimating how attached businesses and their workers are to Office and Outlook in particular. Quoting: 'Google has found out that, yes, many companies are happy to ditch Exchange for Gmail if it means saving money and eliminating the grief of maintaining Exchange in-house. However, and maybe to a degree unexpected by Google, it also discovered that many companies consider it a deal-breaker to lose the functionality that the Outlook-Exchange combo provides, thanks to the deep links that exist between this client-server tandem.'"

Comments

In other news

[Joce640k]

Windows inertia keeping people from using a proper operating system.

Too much in too little time

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Google is trying to explode onto the scene with products and services that compete head to head with some very deeply ingrained technologies. Sometimes, like with the ChromeOS, it's like they are trying to compete against themselves.

What they will find is that earning a good reputation through customer satisfaction is the way to win over customers. Trying to bowl them over with competing products is almost never effective.

Google Search didn't kill Yahoo! search in one fell swoop.
Gmail didn't become dominant (and it still isn't) against Hotmail/Live Mail right away.
Google Maps was able to leverage the Google Search engine, but still has stiff competition from Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest.

But lately, they've been producing new products at an astonishing rate. Taking the shotgun approach of seeing which spaghetti sticks to the wall, Google doesn't seem to have a larger view of what they want to do with their technical talent. This is going to be their downfall in the long run as the advertisement-based profit stream slowly dries up.

Not willing to give up functionality??

[magisterx]

it also discovered that many companies consider it a deal-breaker to lose the functionality that the Outlook-Exchange combo provides

Isn't that the same as saying that companies like the functionality and are willing to pay for it?

I could certainly understand the point if it had said that they are not willing to lose the current interface or not willing to lose the training time already put in, but saying they are not willing to lose the functionality is the same as saying it is good software, they are willing to pay for it, and they are not willing to switch until someone can come up with something actually better.

Microsoft shell game

[chrylis]

The most exasperating irony of this situation (and its siblings of getting people to switch off of MS Office and Windows) is that each new version of Windows (and, recently Office) is a drastically new product anyway. Businesses say they don't want to retrain employees (and schools say that they have to train for MS products)--and then when XP or Vista or Win7 rolls around, they retrain anyway but still claim that familiarity with the interface is the reason they won't consider alternatives.

Secrecy

[Necroman]

I think it's more about letting another company handle your company's email. There is so much critical information about a company in their email, why would they trust it to any external company, even if it is Google. Also, I'm unfamiliar with how Google handles data retention of email. Outlook allows some backup of emails at the IT level of all company emails (included deleted ones).

I know I wouldn't want to have my company give up control of it's email to Google (5000 person company).

Re:Microsoft may just fix this themselves

[Registered Coward v2]

If the next version of Outlook is as different as the last issue of Word was from everything that went before, the advantage of familiarity will disappear.

I think it's a little different with Outlook - the tasks are much simpler (read and respond to email, manage a calender) for most users - many of who probably on use one or two task bar items (New, Reply, print) or tabs (Day, week, Month) so the switch wont entail learning a lot of new menus. So even if you change the overall interface as long as the on-screen view is relatively familiar people won't care.

Word, otoh, is much more of a user intensive experience; requiring the use of more commands, even if some are used infrequently. As a result, interface changes have a much greater impact.

Re:You can use outlook

[GIL_Dude]

You've certainly nailed one of the biggest issues. The ability to control your data, have a deletion policy that is then subpoena-free (including backup destruction), etc. is certainly a deal breaker for most larger companies.

There are other issues too though:
Availability / uptime (and yes, I know a poorly run Exchange infrastructure can have a lot of downtime, but a well run one - ours - has certainly outperformed the availability of Google over the last two years)
Integration with other MS applications such as SharePoint and Access
Another aspect of the "data control" is user control - some companies don't want their folks logging on to mail from just any old virus-infected, malware laden machine and want them to only connect via known good machines on the corporate network. Gmail makes that control impossible.

There are many others, but that's the flavor. I know that some small companies and even some medium ones will think the above concerns are silly and misplaced, but that's the type of argument you are going to get from the big hitters.

GMail is a joke compared to Outlook

[BitZtream]

I'm the lead developer for a product that is currently available only for Outlook (shameless plug/advertisement: http://www.lettermark.com/ )

The next major release which of the system, which now supports Thunderbird, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Apple Mail, and of course Outlook is in the early alpha stages and has been given to several of our larger clients. We've worked with these clients through their Outlook upgrades, complaints and joys.

I can tell you that none of them will ever switch to Gmail as it stands. Theres a good chance none of them will switch off Outlook any time soon, period.

Its not JUST about the company data sitting somewhere else, that really doesn't bother a lot of companies as shocking as it sounds.

The problem? Any of the customers we have, and pretty much ALL of the customers we have that are over 100 seats ALL have other products besides ours that integrate with Outlook to make their email part of a larger workflow. These people track sales, customer relations, trouble tickets, orders, you name it, ALL via Outlook and most of the time using Exchange so that the data can nicely be shared, calendars can be viewed, ect.

Some of this you can do with GMail, but its a pain in the ass. We also have use Google Apps for your Domain to test with. Its not even close, and can't be until they open it up. Yes, Outlook is far more open than GMail in its wettest dreams.

GMail doesn't let my random sales person app hit a button then thrown an entire wedding planning itinerary into an email to the customer, which is also stored in the sales system.

GMail doesn't let my random technical support person import the message into our issue tracking system.

GMail doesn't let me encrypt messages with personally identifiable information in it, which is required by law, regardless of whom it is sent to in a couple of states now.

In short, you may call it 'inertia' if by 'inertia' you mean a far more mature and feature rich product. Otherwise it is simply, and I cringe as I type this, that Outlook is a far more useful tool than GMail.

I HAVE to deal with Outlook and Exchange, I know far too much about it. I ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT STAND IT. The only reason we're supporting other email clients going forward is because I refuse to be forced to use Outlook for email, so I want a choice. Fortunately, there are still large organizations that use things like Groupwise and Lotus Notes which allowed me a very nice business case for supporting more than just Outlook when I took the project over.

But if you think for a second there is a replacement for the Outlook/Exchange combination for a integrated solution of your typical business persons email/contacts/calendar then you're are completely out of touch with reality. I REALLY REALLY wish there was, but there isn't. And GMail isn't anything more than OWA, with less features and a better UI. Its just missing far too many features and the ability for third party software to integrate with it for it to become a replacement for Outlook. Not to mention the legal issues as to why companies really shouldn't be using GMail when customer data is being emailed.

I wish that someone out there would realize this and actually make real Thunderbird extensions to make it on par with the Outlook, but it doesn't exist. I've used all the OSS alternatives, if you think they are equal, you haven't used one of the two things you are comparing. It wouldn't even freaking be hard, all you need is some damn plugins that use IMAP folders for storing things. Do it on something like Cyrus IMAP which has proper notify support and it really could be just as good if not better than exchange! I'd do it myself if I wasn't so overloaded aleady.