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

You can use outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a great summary .... the article mentions the synchronization tool, so outlook can be the front end. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html

Doesn't this make it a non-issue ?

Re:You can use outlook

[jo42]

The real issue, from a real business point of view, is that you would have to be totally fsckin' stupid to store your confidential company communication and data on Google's servers -- and in a foreign country if you are not in the US.

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.

Re:You can use outlook

[maxume]

Most small businesses would have trouble generating a page worth of sensitive information; the relationships they have with customers (not just the contact info) are the important part of the business (perhaps along with being reliable).

Re:You can use outlook

[ajs]

First off, I just want to say that the paranoia issue is moot. Google provides the same sort of assurances that any other outsourced IT organization provides. It's a matter of seeing successful businesses doing this for years that will convince everyone that Google isn't just that ad company they're so familiar with.

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.

Not optional for any public company in the US, so a non-issue.

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)

Sure, you might expose yourself to increased downtime (though it's probably worth noting that you're referring to apps during its beta period). That's a valid down-side. Of course, you get global replication and disaster recovery for free, so you have to think in terms of not having to implement those VERY costly options which aren't optional for most corporations. If downtime were massive, then it still doesn't matter, but Google has had a few bad days during beta, which is vastly superior to my last company and about the same as my current one.

Integration with other MS applications such as SharePoint and Access

Sharepoint (and whatever MS's IM system is, which does quite a lot more than IM, and integrates deeply with SharePoint) is really what this article was getting at. I fully agree that this is a limitation of Google Apps, and while I think it's surmountable for most companies, those that are already serious MS shops will have significant end-user pain moving to something else. Google Docs + Google Talk (both branded and isolated to your company's domain through Apps) make up for some of the functionality, but certainly not all.

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.

That's true ONLY of Google's default Gmail, not the Gmail that's part of Apps. If I recall correctly, you can limit access to your domain by IP. There's a lot of services for the upper-end that I'm not as familiar with because my domain is the freebie service, but I vaguely recall seeing this as a feature (along with S-Ox compliance and various other for-extra-pay features).

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.

Of course, the real question is: are these significant enough issues that the big boys aren't going to have to deal with competing against leaner organizations that grow up from those smaller companies today. I honestly think that outsourced infrastructure is going to be the way almost all large companies go over the next 20 years. This is why I got out of sysadmin, in part.

Re:You can use outlook

[McFadden]

There are a lot more issues than just getting used to a new set of tools.

I recently set up a new small startup company. We have 4 staff, but 3 of us work a lot from home, coming into the office only once or twice a week. As an experiment I set us all up on Google Apps Premium. The email is great - no complaints. Gmail has always been my webmail of choice, and with POP/IMAP support my 2 Mac guys can use mail.app to their hearts content.

Calendar is so-so. Sharing calendars, particularly more than one seems a bit erratic, but it's just about good enough for us to use (we really need shared calendars do the the business we operate).

Docs is the main weakness. The office suite just doesn't have the feature set of any of the offline suites. Offline support is lacking. It frustrates me that Google make a huge thing of this being a set of "collaboration" tools and yet leave out (or don't implement) a really simple and obvious feature like folder-level sharing. If you want to share a folder containing sub-folders with other people in your group, you have to meticulously go through the directory structure and share all the bloody files in each sub-folder individually. Why the hell can't I just share the top folder and have it apply sharing to the rest of the tree?
What worries me more, is that when you go into the requested features forum, you can see that people have been asking for this for a long time now and it's not happened. Which makes me think that Google simply aren't putting a lot of resource into developing it. I don't like entrusting the future of my business into something that they might just drop like a stone if they feel like it. And without more feedback from the devs, and noticeable improvements over time, it certainly feels like they could.

The docs file manager tool itself seems completely brain-damaged at times. You can drag a file from one folder to another, and it disappears. The folder displays (2 items) but only 1 is visible. Where the fuck did it go, and why should I have to kill my browser window and re-launch to see it? I could go on, but I think a couple of examples are enough to suggest that there are what I would suggest are basic areas of functionality that simply aren't ready for prime-time yet.

Eventually we gave up and went back to an offline office suite. Google Apps is a nice idea, and I'm sure that when it's anywhere near fully functional it'll be a very handy for us. But right now it's not even close.

I apologize for the rather disorganized rant. If I'd had more time I'd have written a more organized critique, but given that I was on my way to bed, I banged out this comment in a quick 5 minute brain splurge.

Re:You can use outlook

[MrNaz]

"Does Google actually provide an equivalent to Exchange?"

Short answer, no.

As much as I dislike MS software and MS business practices, MS Exchange is a piece of software the likes of which does not exist elsewhere. Nothing else comes close to Exchange and its associated apps. Google Apps doesn't come close to Exchange's functionality. Forget the same ballpark, it's not even on the same planet.

Re:You can use outlook

[Macfox]

GA isn't for everyone, but it does fit well for small business, educational institutions and community organisations that seek flexible access to data, any time, any place or are under budget constraints.

There's a heap of US universities using the education edition of Google Apps. Some of them with massive deployments of >50,000 users.

The thing to keep in mind is that GA is very flexible and it's a trade off between cost, flexibility and security. You can choose which parts you want (email, calendaring, docs, chat, sites, video, etc) If you are concerned about confidential data and trade secrets, then it probably not for you. But to declares anyone who considers Google Apps or other SaaS providers, totally fsckin' stupid is pretty short sighted.

Re:You can use outlook

[fat_mike]

Um, corporate IT doesn't only consist of managing Exchange. There are enterprise virus/malware scanners that will isolate a machine from the network when something is detected which usually never happens cause there are also enterprise solutions that catch that stuff at the entry point to the network. All this stuff is run by, you know IT PROFESSIONALS WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

Re:You can use outlook

[anagama]

I'm using Darwin Calendar Server in my office: http://trac.calendarserver.org/ You can install it on a linux box and it's even in the Lenny and recent Ubuntu repositories if you don't want to deal with dependency hell. The only real "gotcha" is that you _must_ enable extended attributes in fstab -- without that, you'll pull your hair out wondering why it doesn't work. Sunbird will sync with it, although Sunbird always downloads all the data when it starts, so if your calendar is large (2-3 items per day spanning 2 years), it'll nail your calendar server's resources for about a full minute. After that, your server can get back to doing whatever else it does -- DCS uses very little resources while runnig. During this time when Sunbird is downloading everything in the calender, Sunbird is not responsive, so just let it sit for a minute or two after loading Sunbird. Sunbird will also completely fail to load the calendar beyond a certain size. This is BTW, the linux version of Sunbird. No idea if Windows version works better. With those exceptions, Sunbird works fine and Apple's iCal (if you have any Macs) works flawlessly of course. For remote access, just VPN into your office and sync.

Re:You can use outlook

[lukas84]

I've never seen really big companies with a well-managed IT deployment. Most of them have _extremely_ strict guidelines, often getting into the way of actually doing businesses. This is usually the point where departments start getting their own PCs and their own internet access, not managed by IT. And as soon as that happens, it's all downhill from there.

I've seen several small-to-midsize companies that ran a tight ship but never forgot why they're running IT (to help the business). These companies couldn't afford the latest high-end threat protection services (prince, low number of people), but the fact that most employees were actually working WITH IT and not against IT got them a better environment than the really big companies with fancy gadgets.

Re:You can use outlook

[bemymonkey]

It's apalling, really... I've just loaded up Thunderbird and it switches IMAP folders (on Gmail) within a split second. Outlook needs 5 seconds, depending on how many messages are in the folder...

I think I've stumbled onto the most elegant PIM solution for Windows Mobile + Gmail users, though:

Thunderbird for e-mail with contacts synced from Gmail (which are in turn synced directly from the Windows Mobile device to Gmail via Google Sync), and Outlook 2007 for the rest. Outlook's calendar, notes and tasks aren't so excruciatingly slow that it'd bother me, and this way Thunderbird's address book is always updated with the newest contacts from Outlook and the Windows Mobile device...

Looks like I'll be sticking with this until someone finds me a better solution. :)

Re:You can use outlook

[Glonoinha]

Lotus Notes.
That said, using Notes makes the Outlook/Exchange experience look like the best thing since sliced bread.

Re:You can use outlook

[Rich0]

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.

Not optional for any public company in the US, so a non-issue.

Uh, I don't follow you. For a large company good control of deletions is mandatory, but how that makes this a non-issue escapes me. Does gmail provide for guaranteed deletion?

Pretty much every large company is de-facto required to rigorously delete materials that aren't required by law to be kept. The penalty for not doing so is to be buried alive in discovery whenever you are sued (which probably happens about once a week for a big company).

If a law says that the accounting records used to create a quarterly statement needs to be kept for three years, then you want to keep it for three years (with no meaningful chance of loss), and then make every remote trace of them disappear completely one day later (or as close to this as possible).

This has nothing to do with covering up wrongful behavior. The fact is that you can comply with the letter of the law today, and then be second-guessed about some decision you made with perfect hindsight 10 years from now. So, unless the law states that those records must be preserved for 10 years, then you don't want those records.

As an analogy from the sysadmin world - consider system access logs at an ISP (something here most people would intuitively understand). If you are an ISP you want to keep your logs long enough to handle billing disputes or to be able to identify abuses, but you don't want a 10 year record of everything every one of your customers have ever done online. Then, when some man files a subpoena to find out when a relationship between his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her boyfriend started you can just say that your records only go back 30 days so that you don't have anything, instead of having to go digging through the vaults to find backup tapes, and then show up in court to testify about how those records were maintained (a cost you are not really reimbursed for except maybe a token fee).

Sure, it would be fairly cheap for a big company to save every email ever sent between two people who worked there. However, then whenever somebody gets injured by the company's products there will be some email somewhere between two people joking (or debating) about the product's safety and that will be the "smoking gun" that proves the company covered up the dangers. In every place I've worked the fact is that anytime a decision is made there is somebody who doesn't think it is a good idea - and these people are always praised as prophets when things go wrong. However, if you wait to have unanimous consensus whenever you make a decision nothing would ever get done. A jury has the luxury of not needing to make a profit, and usually fails to find the right risk balance.

Re:You can use outlook

[Bigjeff5]

Er, bullshit?

I work for one of the largest companies in the world (like, top 25-50 big). It is set up on one massive domain trunk (which I think is crazy, but it works), I can access any server in the world from where I am sitting provided I have the right user access, with rather light protections against user installed software, and no restrictions on USB devices, etc. There are heavy user account restrictions and a computer not on the domain will go nowhere fast. We have had exactly one major malware outbreak in the last three years, and the only thing that warranted it as major was that it was very difficult to remove without interrupting service. It was not able to cause any damage at all.

With good IT tools (like active directory and utilities that facilitate automation) and strict MANAGEMENT regarding following IT policies it is trivial to secure and maintain the security of even a massive network involving hundreds of thousands of computers. About 30 people or so set the policies and ensure that they are being followed. This works because we use standard hardware with standard images and solid security templates, we leverage the local desktop support to fix machines that are, for one reason or another, not updating their templates or AV software or what have you, and IT has the authority to remove even a local executive's machine from the network if he refuses to allow them to bring it into compliance. If anything comes of it, the executive could easily find himself moved to a less desirable assignment if he is obviously wrong and refuses to follow policy.

The technical side of things simply requires IT staff that knows what the hell they are doing, and the authority to do what needs to be done. If a company refuses to A.) hire good people and B.) give them the authority to take appropriate action to secure the network, then the network will never be secure. What you are talking about is bad management, and not much more.

That's not to say IT runs things, nor should they, but they need support at the top executive level in order to do the job correctly. If they have to beg lower management to make any little change, then the network will not be secure. If local departments are permitted to buy their own equipment and actually put it on the corporate network, there is no way the network will be secure either. Ever. That's the kind of stuff you need to control to maintain security. Where I work, an unauthorized device could easily get you a visit from the local security guys, who also have the power to terminate your employment if the issue is a severe enough security threat. Nobody puts their own equipment on the network without permission first.

Re:You can use outlook

[Bigjeff5]

Exchange is easily the most powerful email server on the market. Nothing touches it so far.

Communicator is part of Exchange, it's not separate, you can't use the communicator client without an Exchange server. This means it integrates -very- tightly with Outlook. Sharepoint is separate but integrates tightly with Exchange as well, which allows nice integration into Communicator and Outlook. Live Meeting is tied in with all of them as well, and is becoming a very popular tool.

Gmail and Google Apps are cool, but they don't approach this level of facilitating communication. Microsoft makes things easy to the point that, if the backoffice side is set up properly, the user just says "Oh I just click here? Ok, that's easy".

Re:You can use outlook

[rsax]

This solution for Google Apps Premier accounts makes Outlook work pretty much as if it is in an Exchange environment: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync

Re:You can use outlook

[BlueCollarCamel]

What I don't get is why don't they make a Google Apps Appliance, similar to what they did with their search.

Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[LibertineR]

I know, I know, the prevailing opinion is that SharePoint sucks, but in my experience, companies that grab hold of SharePoint integration with Exchange and MS Office, would rather give up their children than that combo.

Where is the competition for that ENTIRE feature set, for a comparative amount of money?

Its full Lock-In, and I have no idea how Google competes with that.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Google Apps let you host the data yourselves? The only time we want our confidential information off-site is in the form of encrypted backups.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[westlake]

Where is the competition for that ENTIRE feature set, for a comparative amount of money?

This is where the geek gets it wrong.

He sees the MS Office suite or perhaps Exchange.

What he doesn't see is that Microsoft - and Microsoft's partners - can deliver a turn key solution for a business of any size.

Microsoft has had close on to 35 years experience and - quite literally - tens of billions of dollars to spend on the study of office work.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[Sycraft-fu]

Ya that's part of the rub with using Google things for a business. They hold all your data. What's more, Google is the ultimate data mining company. They have tools like no one else for looking through vast amounts of data to find what they want. As such, they could, if they wished, very easily dig in to our data for company secrets. Now, they say they won't, but all you have is their word on that. While that's fine for a home user, I don't see that as fine if I run a business, especially a public company. It'd be a great way to get yourself in trouble with your shareholders.

So while I use Gmail myself, I wouldn't want to use Gmail for business, especially a tech business. Hopefully, Google would leave all my mail alone and respect my privacy. Probably they would. However, what if they don't? What if they find plans we have for bringing an amazing new product to market, and they then beat us to the punch?

So I think there's more than just inertia at play here. With business information, you have to start to take things like secrecy seriously. That generally means hosting your own stuff or, if you must use a 3rd party, make sure they are a disinterested 3rd party. By that I mean if you take a big data centre, who's only business is holding servers, they aren't that interested in what is on there, nor do they really have the capability to look. Their market is, well, holding servers. However Google, their market is tech toys of all kinds, and they keep expanding in to new areas. Thus they might well be interested in what you are doing.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[leamanc]

I admin Zimbra at my org. To get anywhere near the features you need for a business, you have to BUY the network edition. The free version just isn't going to cut it. You can't even use Zimbra's backup system with the free version.

And we've looked at Alfresco. What started out as a simple shared folder web app has blossomed into a monstrous CMS web serving solution. It's not even in the same sphere as SharePoint anymore.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[JAlexoi]

Microsoft has at most 20 years of experience in that field. Before the 90-ies they were basically a second grade DOS and developer tool vendor.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[Robert Larson]

Google isn't evil so this doesn't matter. They said so themsleves.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[ciggieposeur]

that SharePoint sucks,

My company runs Sharepoint. As far as I can tell, it is a document store with version control, a business user's version of source code control minus defect/feature tracking. But I've also been told that we really don't use Sharepoint correctly, that it's got a lot of nice features and such.

Could someone explain briefly what Sharepoint really does?

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[Russianspi]

Yeah, you have to buy it. And it is expensive!! But, when my org looked at TCO (on of Microsoft's favorite topics), Zimbra came out MUCH cheaper for the same feature set (Including MAPI based Outlook support). They support blackberries, and have full-on Mac sync, too. Plus, their web-client is quite nice/usable (as opposed to OWA), and support is responsive. So, there is the answer to the original question: where is the full-feature-set competetion: it is at Zimbra. (Note - I am not affiliated in Zimbra in any way, except for being a happy customer!)

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[Bert64]

If you sign up for and pay for a service, then Google are obliged to continue providing that service for the term of the contract providing you keep up your end of the bargain (ie paying for it)...
They are also obliged to abide by any other terms in the contract, so as a business you would be foolish to not demand clauses that forbid Google from mining your data or doing anything else with it not directly related to providing the service.. You should also demand the ability to download all of your data at any time you wish in a standard format so that you can keep your own backup and/or have the data available to you for migrating to another service.

Companies trust their critical data and resources to other companies all the time... There are companies who specialize in storing or destroying massive quantities of hard copy documents for instance, not to mention courier or security companies.

This is actually a better situation than using MS apps, which come with no warranty and often provide no method or guarantee to get the data out in a standard format.

Obviously the best plan is to have the data on your own hardware, in formats which you have full documentation for, and using software which you have an unlimited irrevocable right to use for any purpose, but neither MS nor Google offer this right now.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[blincoln]

As far as I can tell, it is a document store with version control, a business user's version of source code control minus defect/feature tracking.
[snip]
Could someone explain briefly what Sharepoint really does?

It does a *lot* of things, all under the umbrella of web-based collaboration. Some examples:
- The document store (with optional versioning control) that you mentioned. This also includes the ability to add additional metadata to the files. For some special document types, you get a special type of library, like a picture gallery for images.
- Lists - sort of like a web version of how business users tend to use Excel, although almost everything in SharePoint is a list at some level, including the document libraries.
- A very powerful search engine that can index all of the content in SharePoint as well as other locations (file shares, Exchange public folders, other web sites). It has tons of Google-esque features like the ability to do "site:slashdot.org"-type syntax but e.g. instead of specifying a particular site, you can specify a particular metadata field to limit the search to. You can also heavily customize the back-end with lists of noise words, synonyms (e.g. specifying that if someone searches for "IBM", documents that contain "International Business Machines" should also be included), etc.
- The whole thing is sort of a MySpace/Facebook for corporations. IE your users can throw together web content without actually knowing HTML, and can e.g. create simple applications vaguely similar to how Excel can.
- From 2007 on, there are a number of specialized library types like discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. Note that the wiki support in particular is *very* limited compared to something like MediaWiki.
- If you buy Enterprise SharePoint CALs for your users, you can make use of some incredibly powerful features like the Business Data Catalogue, which is an interface to SQL/ODBC/OLEDB data, and makes database content available as lists within SharePoint. So if you have e.g. an HR database sitting in Oracle, you can bring it (or at least the non-private data) into SharePoint for your users to use as a canonical version of that information (IE anything they use it for is automatically updated when the database is). Combine this with the Excel Services backend (which lets users set up Excel formulas and macros for online instead of local processing), and they can now make very powerful business web apps.

It's a very, very complicated system and at least today it has a lot of limitations and bugs, but there's also a lot of interesting potential there. I'm not a huge fan of using it myself, but every actual business user I've worked with has loved it to the point that if we replaced all of our fileservers with SharePoint servers, I think they'd be overjoyed.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[tronbradia]

They have tools like no one else for looking through vast amounts of data to find what they want. As such, they could, if they wished, very easily dig in to our data for company secrets. Now, they say they won't, but all you have is their word on that.

You have their 'word' but it would also ruin their reputation if they were caught, and unless you're emailing around the Minuteman launch codes, I'm pretty confident that Google's reputation is worth more than your data. If you get a security system for your house, the security company would have a very easy time robbing you, but their reputation is worth a lot more to them than whatever is in your house. If you think about it that way, Google has more incentive to keep your data safe than your own IT people do.

Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby!

[pamar]

Note: I work for a large System Integrator company in my country and I have recently left a project which delivered a corporate intranet built on Sharepoint. The intranet has 3000 users, just so that you get a picture of what kind of systems I work on.

It does a *lot* of things, all under the umbrella of web-based collaboration. Some examples:
- The document store (with optional versioning control) that you mentioned. This also includes the ability to add additional metadata to the files. For some special document types, you get a special type of library, like a picture gallery for images.

Yet it is not a "proper" CMS. It fails spectacularly to provide a out-of-the-box solution for documents made of small sets of disparate files (ex.: a financial statement as .doc plus a pdf version and accompanying excel; in order to treat this set as a single identity you have to roll up your own custom implementation).

- Lists - sort of like a web version of how business users tend to use Excel, although almost everything in SharePoint is a list at some level, including the document libraries.

An interesting and flexible approach unless you want to build relationship among existing lists. Yes, you have "lookup" but it's fragile (good luck deploying a solution with lookup fields to different sites, for a start) and Sharepoint confines everything into non-communicating sites so if you need a list to centralize, say, a list of departments so that you can reuse it from other subsites... you have to write code for that.

- A very powerful search engine that can index all of the content in SharePoint as well as other locations (file shares, Exchange public folders, other web sites). It has tons of Google-esque features like the ability to do "site:slashdot.org"-type syntax but e.g. instead of specifying a particular site, you can specify a particular metadata field to limit the search to. You can also heavily customize the back-end with lists of noise words, synonyms (e.g. specifying that if someone searches for "IBM", documents that contain "International Business Machines" should also be included), etc.

Didn't play much with it so I can't comment. If it does what it says on the box, it's nice.

- The whole thing is sort of a MySpace/Facebook for corporations. IE your users can throw together web content without actually knowing HTML, and can e.g. create simple applications vaguely similar to how Excel can.

Forget about corporate homogeneous look&feel, or decent collaboration tools like forums, faq lists, or blogs, though. The stuff offered without resorting to third party solutions is pathetical.

- From 2007 on, there are a number of specialized library types like discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. Note that the wiki support in particular is *very* limited compared to something like MediaWiki.

We used forums, mostly. They are horrible and very feature-limited.

- If you buy Enterprise SharePoint CALs for your users, you can make use of some incredibly powerful features like the Business Data Catalogue, which is an interface to SQL/ODBC/OLEDB data, and makes database content available as lists within SharePoint. So if you have e.g. an HR database sitting in Oracle, you can bring it (or at least the non-private data) into SharePoint for your users to use as a canonical version of that information (IE anything they use it for is automatically updated when the database is). Combine this with the Excel Services backend (which lets users set up Excel formulas and macros for online instead of local processing), and they can now make very powerful business web apps.

And forget setting up any meaningful relationship among the data unless you wrote code yourself.

Also, Sharepoint/Exchange integration has so

Market it to Notes users

[chiph]

They'll change in a heartbeat -- anything .. Anything! to get away from Notes.

Chip H.

Re:Market it to Notes users

[LibertineR]

Nope. Notes users are like abused women. They really believe that this time, everything will be okay, if they can only FORGIVE....

In other news

[Joce640k]

Windows inertia keeping people from using a proper operating system.

Re:In other news

[budgenator]

Windows inertia keeping people from using a proper operating system.

Once I can boot into a new Linux install and have my four monitors come up without having to manually edit files and search forums for answers....then you can call Linux a proper operating system.

Once I can boot into a new Windows install and have my four monitors come up without having to manually registry files and search internet for drivers....then you can call Windows a poser 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.

Re:Too much in too little time

[Insanity Defense]

But lately, they've been producing new products at an astonishing rate. Taking the shotgun approach of seeing which spaghetti sticks to the wall,

Is it really just lately? It is also possible that a lot of these products have been in the pipeline for some time and we see them as they mature to the point of public testing. We may have seen things like GMail and Google maps sooner because they were early starts compared to what is coming out now. It takes time to start and mature a product to even a public beta testing level.

Re:Too much in too little time

[Lennie]

I think this is, because a lot of their services are offered free and they are looking for more profitable businessmodels. Advertisments is their only really profit machine at this point.

Re:Too much in too little time

[Will.Woodhull]

Wow.

I cannot believe that you loaded that metaphorical shotgun with spaghetti and fired it at the wall.

Now clean up your metaphorical mess and don't do that again.

Re:Too much in too little time

[darkmeridian]

Google is attempting to position itself as the data kingpins of the next-generation. Right now, the average consumer is concerned about their privacy. They don't want to host their data on outside servers, etc. But kids nowadays have no such compunctions about posting their entire personal life onto Facebook or Myspace. You have teenagers who have spent their entire lives in the Internet age. They'll grow up with that attitude, then put all their business work onto third-party servers. Google wants to be that server. There is a network effect here so Google has to act fast to seize new ground. It doesn't make sense now, but it will in five years when everyone is running on Google's servers.

Google has taken Microsoft's MO of persistent beta testing. Google releases a product, it sucks, then Google fixes it, then adds more functionality. In a year or two, you have a good product. So Google is reaching all over to get its feet on the ground to start that process with as many products as possible. The end goal is to have a whole suite of interrelated data-related products that are good enough for 95% of the users out there so no one else can break into the Google data hegemony.

Google wants to provide an entire suite so all of your information goes through Google, so no one else can break in and take your data. You have Gmail, with its fast interface and great spam blocking. That naturally extends to Google Calendar. If you want directions, you have Google Maps that takes info from Gmail and Google Calendar and gives it to you. All that info is fed into Google so it can toss up targeted ads for you. Now with Google Voice being deployed, you can seamlessly call contacts who mailed you, or a business close to the destination. Google Street View lets you see where your destination looks like. You can get an ad from Gmail, then buy the product using Google Checkout. When you're on vacation, you can take photos and upload it onto Picasa Web via Picasa. You can tag your friends and location so Google knows where you like to go and who you hang out with. Your info is already on Google. The more products Google has, the less likely you are to take any bit of your data elsewhere. I mean, Flickr is great, but Picasa works so well with Picasa Web! You can easily retouch a photo using "I'm Feeling Lucky" then sync it onto Picasa Web. You can e-mail photos to your friends via Gmail through Picasa. And it's all free! It becomes increasingly hard for a competitor to get into the data business.

I am a small business owner. I have to say that Google has been a godsend. I cannot afford to deploy my own Exchange servers, much less administer one. But with Google Apps, I can push e-mail from my domain on my Blackberry. Third party apps (and now Google new plugin) allow me to sync my Google contacts and calendar onto Outlook and my Blackberry, which I can backup in case Google eats all my data. Google Voice lets me use only one phone number, so I can be selectively available everywhere I want to be available with clients being none the wiser. As the features become more complete, I can see Google penetrating deeper into mid-sized and large-sized businesses. Google has to maintain uptime and reliability, which is a very difficult task. Perhaps that's why they are building so many geographically-separate servers. But for a small business owner who would otherwise would have to do without Blackberry push mail on my domain, or without calendar and contacts syncing, I'm very happy with Google's software suite right now.

Re:Too much in too little time

[mjwx]

Google Maps was able to leverage the Google Search engine, but still has stiff competition from Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest.

Google Map's main competition when it was launched was ESRI's ArcIMS/WMS servers (Internet Mapping Service/Web Mapping Service) as well as other IMS/WMS based on non ESRI products but most were based on ESRI products. Yahoo and MapQuest as well as MS's Virtual Earth offerings were responding to Google.

Where google differed is that it offered pre-prepared imagery to the public either free or at a decent cost (Google have had an interest in satellite imagery long before Google Maps was released, their participation in the GeoEye project for example) and provided a pre-made gateway for that service (all other solutions required you to build your own host). They also had the first decent public mapping gateway combined with a very well integrated an easy to use free public client.

ESRI responded to Google by combining the separate IMS and WMS products into a single product (ArcGIS Server).

Taking the shotgun approach of seeing which spaghetti sticks to the wall,

What most people don't see unless they've worked in the GIS field is that Google has been involved in mapping and imagery for a while now. It's the same with their other offering. Android was not introduced overnight, same with Google Docs/apps. A great deal of behind the scenes work goes on with Google releases and normally a very long public beta to get rid of the bugs before the final product is released.

Same old story, same old song and dance...

[that IT girl]

I believe this is the argument that keeps so many people on Windows and IE, too. This article is informative in that it brings up another example I hadn't thought of before, but when it comes down to it, people just resist change.
I guess the bottom line is, if you are coming out with a new product, you don't have to be the best--you just have to first and spread quickly. Then it really doesn't matter much what comes later, you're in the money.

Re:Same old story, same old song and dance...

[capnkr]

{snip}...you don't have to be the best--you just have to first and spread quickly. Then it really doesn't matter much what comes later, you're in the money.

And that bit there pretty much explains the whole Windows hegemony... Within the last 24 hours, on another non-tech forum, there's a guy who's been getting griefed by a WinXP install. After others suggested Linux, he responded with the (all-too common) "...But I can't run my business-related Win apps on it". Of course, and only after I pointed out to him that he could easily do so via virtualization, he comes clean with the real reason - that it is by his choice he continues to use Windows, which in his own words he refers to as 'the devil he knows'. He has been having these issues for over 2 months now, attempting to get this box running - and this from a guy who coded DB apps for Win98. People are very resistant to change. Most of 'em, it seems, they'd rather suffer. :/

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.

Re:Microsoft shell game

[jimicus]

All this droning on about training but I've never seen a company offer any training on anything other than custom applications that are specific to the organisation. Windows and Office training may have happened years ago when computers were new but today...

Re:Microsoft shell game

[BitZtream]

Yes, and I know people who by eXtenze and Bottled Water. There are always going to be idiots in the world, you have to throw them out of the equation unless you are in the business of taking advantage of those idiots.

IT people have a harder time 'getting comfortable' because they generally know the products better than the average user. IT people generally have to know everything about the product because each one of their users will actually use different parts. IT people also generally take pride in knowing how to do stuff, so they are much more into how the software works.

Joe the Secretary just needs to know how to use his company press release templates in Word. Gina the marketing drone needs to know how to do mail merge. The accounting group needs to know how to get the new version of excel to pull in some data from the old version of access until it gets converted, Dave the IT guy has to know it all so he can explain it to Joe, Gina and the accounting group when asked. Sadly, a two day training course doesn't teach you everything, it just hits the high points in a hurry.

Microsoft may just fix this themselves

[localroger]

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.

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.

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:Secrecy

[dissy]

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).

The article is clearly talking about comparing things to Exchange server.
If you won't trust your email with another company, they won't be running Exchange since Microsoft (read: another company) makes that software.

There is no more trust from Google than currently with Microsoft for using a Google App Appliance.

You are saying businesses won't trust putting their email on a Google app server in the companies server farm, because that is somehow different from putting their email on an exchange server in the companies server farm?

Somehow using software from Google on your own hardware is trusting Google, yet using software from Microsoft on your own hardware is not trusting Microsoft?

http://www.google.com/enterprise/

If a company won't trust software from Google, unless they are just lying and being hypocrites, are already avoiding Exchange for the exact same reason.
If they ARE on Exchange server, they are already running Exchange in-house, so there is no difference in running Google Apps in-house as well. Exactly nothing internal leaves the company in either case.

We're not talking about Google's free personal Gmail service only available online here ;}

Client-server works well for many applications

[sphealey]

>> 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 think it is a more general unwillingness to accept that the client-server model works pretty darn well for many business-intensive apps, and that fat clients often are better suited to business use than browser-based apps. If pure mobility is the goal than the browser-based systems are a necessity, but I have seen too many unfortunate office workers clicking away at browser windows for tasks that could have been handled in seconds by a directly-connected interface.

sPh

SEE? Just like a woman!

[LibertineR]

Oh come on now. He isn't all that bad. Sure, he has his issues. He is slow. He is bloated. He doesn't treat me correctly. He's complex. He's slow. The way he treats me leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, I would rather he talked to me instead of punch me in the face. He is slow. He has a hard time staying employed. But really, he's not THAT bad...

Google looking ahead to Wave of future

[RyanHam]

Google appear to be actually focusing on emails replacement and to me it looks very promising: Wave combines email, instant messaging and collaboration. You can run it on googles servers or on your own. Its very promising. Google Wave http://wave.google.com/ Common irritations with email, - replying to one person, reply to the group, making sure everyones included - trying to coordinate on one document via email and contant back forth emails

Re:People WILL change...

[Henry V .009]

I've had Windows 7 on my desktop for a while (currently RTC). I really don't notice too many differences between it and Vista except for some superficial UI changes. On the other hand, Vista was more or less a fine operating system. It's not Vista that was shit, it was the IT media that was shit (but everyone already knew that).

Re:Can you help me?

[hedwards]

Yes, and for $10 I'll tell you.

A better tool

[jamesl]

... employees unwillingness to give up a tool that's so familiar.

Perhaps it's due to employees unwillingness to give up a tool that works so well. And which gets better with every new release.

Tried getting away, but eventually gave in

[brainee28]

I wanted to get away from Exchange. So I put in HP Openmail (Samsung Contact). That works for a few years until my users crashed my server (management refused to allow me to place limits on mailboxes, so this is what happens). After the crash, I put up a Postfix IMAP server and used Mozilla Thunderbird. What I found was that even though my users essentially use the email portions of Outlook and not the other collaborative features (some use the Contacts and Calendars, but not with any critical data), they still wanted Outlook. Daily I would hear complaints about how they hated using Mozilla, and eventually, we put Exchange 2007 and Outlook back in.

I think what happened is that many companies put in Exchange without understanding whether or not their company would really use all the collaborative features with Outlook. I'm willing to be many of them only really use the email portions, like mine does. Had my company started out with using just a simple POP3/IMAP server, then we might be using something like Google right now. But because we started out with the "defacto" standard, we setup the wrong expectation. This is what will be tough for Google; trying to get existing users to switch.

I agree that the Outlook plugin was probably not the best thing Google did, but it may be the only way Google can start transitioning people over to their services.

Re:What about hosted Exchange?

[gonz]

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.

Thousands of companies leave their mail on other companies servers when they use Hosted Exchange. The issues usually boils down to whether or not a company wants to admin their own Exchange servers in-house.

You're comparing apples and oranges here. With hosted Exchange, you're entrusting your data to a medium-sized company that specializes in hosting Exchange. They charge a fee because that's really their business plan. With Google Apps, you're entrusting your data to a massive leviathan that aims to eventually be a competitor for every business in every industry, and who specializes in mining the hell out of everyone else's data. Google doesn't charge a fee because your data is way more valuable to them than the actual cost of hosting it.

Sure, Google has a privacy policy. But what good is a promise to only use your data to "improve our services" and "develop new services", when those "services" are completely unbounded? Google is constantly trying to invent new services, and inevitably its services will turn into a conflict of interest.

Google might be appropriate for individuals who don't see any value in data privacy. But it's not appropriate for a business.

-Gonz

Happened here with a different solution

[Hamfist]

We migrated to in-house Zimbra from a simple sendmail server (500 accounts), which has worked exceptionally well. We had quite a bit of pushback from die-hard Outlook people. We adopted a policy that all new hires would get Zimbra and a business case would have to be presented to get Outlook for that user. We also dont support any of the sharing features via Outlook, and all new training material is for Zimbra and not Outlook. We also chose a few high profile individuals and helped them become more efficient with Zimbra to help spead the word. We still have about 50% of the user base on Outlook, POPing off of Zimbra. We expect this number to dwindle as our users decide to start leveraging sharing.

A mixed mode can be supported, and its probably the only way to move away from a deeply entrenched tech like Outlook. Baby steps are required.

Re:Intertia and...

[Macfox]

Yes, the premier edition does have this ability to leverage an external directory. Many of the edu users make good use of this feature. Resource calendars are also supported in the premier edition.

There's an App for That

[alexburke]

Right here.

Quoting the Google:

Now businesses can run Microsoft Outlook on Google Apps instead of Microsoft Exchange, so they can achieve the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps while employees use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar.

Oh, and it works with all editions of Google Apps, both free and paid, and it costs $0 extra.

You're welcome.

Re:SEE? Just like a woman!

[DoofusOfDeath]

Oh come on now. He isn't all that bad. Sure, he has his issues. He is slow. He is bloated. He doesn't treat me correctly. He's complex. He's slow. The way he treats me leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, I would rather he talked to me instead of punch me in the face. He is slow. He has a hard time staying employed. But really, he's not THAT bad...

But... the chairs. Oh God, the chairs...

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.

Re:GMail is a joke compared to Outlook

[That's Unpossible!]

All of the things you're describing as locking these people into Outlook sound like things that could better be handled *outside* of Outlook.

E.g. why is a tech support system being built on top of Outlook? ::shudder::

The only thing stopping our company from moving to Gmail is lack of REAL BlackBerry/iPhone push support. What is taking Google so long to implement ActiveSync? They licensed it from Microsoft, implemented it for Calendar and Contacts. LET'S GO, GOOGLE!

Re:GMail is a joke compared to Outlook

[jimicus]

All of the things you're describing as locking these people into Outlook sound like things that could better be handled *outside* of Outlook.

They're probably integrated with Outlook because the problem they solve is fundamentally 70% communication, 30% organising that communication in some fashion. Their plugin provides the 30% organising, Outlook provides the communication.

I could equally ask - why the Hell do so few PDAs and smartphones support IMAP NOTIFY? It gives you push email using a perfectly good standard that works quite happily with any half-decent IMAP server. Concept-wise, it's not drastically different to ActiveSync (client establishes a TCP/IP connection with the server, says "let me know when something new comes in" and keeps the connection open).

Re:GMail is a joke compared to Outlook

[BitZtream]

As I've said in another post. 'Superior product' is not a synonym for 'lock-in'. GMail lacks features that Outlook has. That doesn't make you 'Locked In' to Outlook. All the data is easily exportable, you can move it very easy, there is no lockin.

There just simply isn't a product that has the features that Outlook does.

I'm sorry you don't like Outlook. I don't either, but there is no Lock In, there just isn't any competition, regardless of all the shitty little jokes that try to call themselves replacements such as Zimbra or OpenExchange or whatever that happens to be called this week.

Tech support isn't using Outlook for the support system, but the tech support people can get an email to them personally, instead of to the proper support address, click a button and it goes into the support system.

I'm sorry you don't understand how useful integration between products can be, but it is. Integration doesn't imply using that Outlook is being used for the support system, but it does make using the support system far easier. Our support system is actually Eventum, now part of the MySQL family, and we have a nice plugin that makes it so when a sales person or anyone in our company gets an email thats REALLY a support issue, with the click of a button and filling out a form it gets thrown into Eventum, all the appropriate contacts are added to the ticket, priorities set, ect ect ect.

Do that with GMail. The best you can get is moving it to another shared folder, such as the standard inbound support email folder.

You won't get iPhone push support from google without MobileMe accounts, thats the way iPhone push works. Use MobileMe and you already have iPhone push email.

Google uses ActiveSync to sync with Outlook, nothing else.

Again, 'Superior Product' is not another word for 'Lock In', regardless of how much we all hate the company with the superior product.

Re:People WILL change...

[Tenebrousedge]

No, Vista was shit when it came out. There were several serious bugs, one involving file copying, performance issues, incredible amounts of driver issues (graphics drivers especially), and the whole 'vista ready' mess.

I'll grant that the situation is much improved now.

Whether or not IT media is shit, the initial reports on Vista were extremely positive, from the betas to shortly after the release. I presume Microsoft paid for a good many of those, but the point is more that the bad press started after Vista had been released and in use for a while.

Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[Sycraft-fu]

So what is a "proper" OS? What does Windows do wrong, that your "proper" OS does right? Provides a standard, enriched experience where more than just a kernel is standardized? Makes the OS easy to use without a command line? Has a working audio layer? Oh wait... those are all good things.

What is it that Windows doesn't do, that keeps it from being "proper"? I'd really like to know since it seems that, well, Windows does pretty much everything. You want to do office productivity stuff? Yep, Windows is good at that. Need a web server? Sure it'll do that. Wanna play games? That's fine too. Doing some media production? No problem.

I get a little tired of this attitude that Windows is such a bad OS and if only people would "see the light" things would be better. Oh really? Then why is it that I can do everything I want with Windows with very little difficulty, which is quite a varied set of things, but when I try to do it on Linux I discover some easy, some very hard, some impossible? From a user standpoint, Windows works well.

The argument of it not being a "proper" OS to me sounds like generally snobbery, the same sort you get from people who think that only their very limited taste in movies are "proper" movies or only their very limited taste in beer is "proper" beer. No, not really. If Linux works well for you that is wonderful, by all means use it, but don't try and push it as the One True Way(tm) unless you've got something more than condescension to back it up with.

To most people, a computer is a tool. They aren't in it for a philosophical or semantic debate, they want it to do whatever various functions they need, and do it with a minimum of fuss on their part.

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[skeeto]

Windows really is a poorly designed OS, and as such I view it as an expensive toy. To name some things from the perspective from a fairly fresh install:

It intentionally hides lots of information from the user for the sake of hand-holding. The execution permission on the filesystem is stored in the filename (ie ".exe"). The shell sucks. The filesystem has all kinds of stupid, arbitrary limitations (like no ?, <, >, ", *, :, | characters allowed). Case insensitive filenames. No package manager (at all!). Still use archaic "drives" for the filesystems. Spaces in system path names. Severe limitations on the size of environmental variables. A seriously piss poor excuse for a browser. Lots of GUI-only configuration. The registry. No SSH. No X. No basic commands (find, grep, ln, df, du, etc.; part of shell sucking really). Extremely shitty text editor. Regular BSODs (yes, even Vista; I have yet to personally see a linux kernel panic, or any other crash that required a reboot). No decent interpreters (even the barest unix installs always have an awk, and almost always have perl).

Luckily, some of this can be fixed by installing tools ported from unixland (cygwin can help for a bit until it quickly falls into a broken state). However, because of the lack of package manager this can be time consuming.

So not only is it expensive and proprietary, it's technically inferior in almost every way.

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[Phroggy]

I suspect a lot of people who complain that Windows isn't a real operating system haven't really used it that much in the past eight years or so, so they're simply unaware that it isn't the steaming pile of crap that Win98 used to be. After all, people defended Win98 back then, the same way they're defending XP now, so how would an outsider know that it's actually completely different?

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[okmijnuhb]

How about no built-in handling for zip or iso files? And then when the OS asks if you would like it to search the net for handlers, it comes up empty!
I love when I open an attachment in outlook, and when i close the email, it asks if I would like to save the file's changes. Whether or not i say yes or no, it gives me the same ridiculous dialog without saving any changes.
I love being nagged by my OS every 5 minutes to reboot after an update. I love being pestered and annoyed by my "real" OS, while I am trying to get some work done, just because my OS thinks it's work is more important than mine.

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[drsmithy]

The execution permission on the filesystem is stored in the filename (ie ".exe").

False.

The shell sucks.

How so ?

The filesystem has all kinds of stupid, arbitrary limitations (like no ?, , ", *, :, | characters allowed).

These are limitations within the shell, not the filesystem.

Case insensitive filenames.

This is most definitely a feature, not a problem.

No package manager (at all!).

That's because it doesn't have the dependency hell that requires such a thing in Linux.

Still use archaic "drives" for the filesystems.

Windows has supported (easily) mounting drives underneath directories for nearly a decade. People prefer drives because they are a more sensible organisation tool.

Spaces in system path names.

Irrelevant at best. Not to mention, why would you be referencing paths (that might not be consistent) across systems instead of using the environment variables or API calls ?

Severe limitations on the size of environmental variables.

For example ?

A seriously piss poor excuse for a browser.

That most people find more than adequate. Can't be that bad.

Lots of GUI-only configuration.

Irrelevant.

The registry.

What's the problem with a transactional database ?

No SSH.

Remote desktop instead.

No X.

Terminal services and remote desktop is superior in pretty much every way.

No basic commands (find, grep, ln, df, du, etc.; part of shell sucking really).

Irrelevant to most all users. Installable for those who desire it.

Extremely shitty text editor.

Irrelevant and unnecessary.

Regular BSODs (yes, even Vista; I have yet to personally see a linux kernel panic, or any other crash that required a reboot).

If your system is BSODing regularly, your hardware or drivers are broken. Not an OS issue.

No decent interpreters (even the barest unix installs always have an awk, and almost always have perl).

Also irrelevant and unnecessary to most all users. Installable if desired.

So not only is it expensive and proprietary, it's technically inferior in almost every way.

You've listed a whole bunch of stuff that's either flat-out erroneous or userspace personal preference. Nothing technical.

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[Bert64]

Being "standardized" is both a good and a bad thing... One size does not fit all, and a monoculture is no good for anyone... The ability to select the best tool for the job rather than having to use a "standard" is a good thing. Data should be standardized, but how you interact with it should be a matter of choice... Roads are standard, tv signals are standard, but people drive all kinds of different vehicles and use different types of tv.
But to answer your question:

Windows makes a terrible server platform, you can't strip it down to the bare minimum, you can't install and manage it from a serial console... and don't mention the "cli only mode" in windows 2008, their idea of cli only is to load the entire gui layer and then put a cmd.exe window in the middle of it... what was the point in loading the gui layer with all it's overhead just to display a cli? a windowed cli will never work over a serial console either...

On a desktop system the interface is extremely clunky, and is very much geared towards doing things their way or nothing... Their way doesn't suit me, the default ways of most linux distros don't suit me either but linux is much easier to customize.

Linux is easy to use without a command line, modern distros will let you do everything most users will ever want without a command line... And yet, many seasoned users actively choose to use the command line on linux.. Why? because in many cases it's easier, much easier for an experienced user, and much easier to explain when trying to help an unskilled user. Windows users, even experienced ones rarely use the command line mostly because the windows cli is pretty bad, but one counter example is when someone doing phone support wants an ip address from a windows user they're supporting, they almost always have them open a command prompt and type "ipconfig"... Why? because that's easier than finding the IP through the gui (which i assume can be done somehow).
Because of this people get the impression linux is only usable from the cli, when in reality the cli is often the best but not the only way to do many things...

And when it comes to advanced things, a cli where you can cut+paste is much easier than regedit...

Another issue is package management, windows simply doesn't have one, on linux i can just open my package manager, search for what i want and hit install, and what i want is installed including any dependencies it has, or i can do it from the cli. Windows requires you to manually find what you want through google, trust that the download site you find is reputable (when was the last time a windows user downloaded a file from a random download site and then compared the checksums with a set published by an official site?), and then wait for the download to finish before you can manually execute and follow through with the installer. That is just a HUGE pain in the ass.

Multiple workspaces - i cant live without multiple workspaces, and all the windows implementations i've seen have sucked, mostly because no apps or even the basic window manager are designed with workspaces in mind. And yes, aside from workspaces i can't stand the way the windows window manager works, i find it clunky and inflexible.

Foreign filesystems - linux comes with support for all kinds of filesystems out of the box, windows just doesn't, and what third party filesystem drivers do exist are often poorly implemented, buggy or both... I have to read disks from macs, bsd and linux boxes all the time and occasionally misc other systems, windows just doesn't cut it, they arrogantly only support their own filesystems.

Source - I want the ability to modify the source code of the programs i use, to do things the authors never intended... I also want to be able to use new and exciting hardware, many years ago i used alpha, more recently i was using 64bit amd64 very early on and these days i would be looking at low power arm based systems, microsoft have always been playing catch up and the closed source nature of most windows apps make

Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh

[skeeto]

In several of your responses you cite that "typical users" don't need it, which only reinforces my comment about Windows being a toy operating system. Typical users use their computers as a browser/e-mail appliance, and maybe some word processing or games. It's a toy. To be clear, I am not saying there is something wrong with that, and it doesn't make typical users "stupid" or anything.

But for serious computing, like research, simulation, large data processing, etc., a unix-like system is going to be incredibly more useful. I work in a laboratory and I see first-hand all the time how Windows continually gets in the way of productivity. Management and overhead prefers Windows because they like Office and Outlook and that whole thing, but the technical people, needing flexible computing systems, generally prefer some kind of unix-like system when they have a choice.

The execution permission on the filesystem is stored in the filename (ie ".exe").

False.

Upon further examination I now see this is entirely true, but that's how it effectively works. If someone emails me a file with a .exe suffix Windows will automatically execute it if I click on it wrong. In unix, I would need to manually set the execute permission. In Windows, the sender is effectively setting this. Combined with hiding file extensions by default probably makes this one of the biggest mistakes in computing history. The solution right now in the case of email is to block filenames with "bad" suffixes.

The shell sucks.

How so ?

The unix shells are some of the most powerful computer interfaces. The traditional Windows shell doesn't even come close. I read a bit about PowerShell when it came out, but I am still not convinced it even comes close either.

The filesystem has all kinds of stupid, arbitrary limitations (like no ?, , ", *, :, | characters allowed).

These are limitations within the shell, not the filesystem.

I am corrected again. A test with ntfs-3g allowed me to use these characters. From Windows though, the this is still effectively a limit on the filesystem. Is there an API that gives enough access to do it? I've never seen a program use it.

On several occasions I have had filenames with some of these characters in them, threw them in a tarball, brought them into the Windows world, and found mangled filenames upon extraction.

For example, I would make a static wget recursive mirror of a website, which includes the CGI arguments in the filenames, like "index.php?q=hello". On Windows, the static version becomes unnavigatable because of the mangled names. It's really frustrating.

Case insensitive filenames.

This is most definitely a feature, not a problem.

Case of newbie hand-holding. See top of post.

No package manager (at all!).

That's because it doesn't have the dependency hell that requires such a thing in Linux.

I guess you don't have much experience with a good package manager? Dependencies are an issue that these solve, but they are really fantastic for maintaing and entire system. With a single command I can update all the software on my system. With one command I can install a number of desired packages. On Windows, each package has to do this itself, each with its own interfaces and deamons, which is a stupid way to do it.

I can't imagine maintaining a system without it.

Still use archaic "drives" for the filesystems.

Windows has supported (easily) mounting drives underneath directories for nearly a decade. People prefer drives because they are a more sensible organisation tool.

People prefer them because it's what they are used to, and its what all that legacy software needs to see. I think the unix root-style (/) way is much more sensible. To each his own.

Spaces in system path n

Agreed - Too Much of a Paradigm Shift

[vinn]

Yup, you'd pretty much have to pry Outlook out of my cold dead fingers before switching to Google's apps. See, it's not the software, it's the way I work. Outlook just so happens to fit the style of how I like to work, organize my my stuff, organize appointments, and has some nice integration points with tools I need, like CRM.

(Note: I'm not a Microsoft fanboy. I've been using Linux since 1995 and my first mail client was mh.)

Google wants me to rethink how I work in order to use their tools. I don't have cute little folders, I have to deal with "labels". I want filters to put mail into folders, not labels, because I don't want to deal with seeing the new mail in my Inbox that I know is irrelevant; I want the Facebook mail in a Facebook folder I can ignore all week long. Searching isn't necessarily as nice as sorting because sometimes my brain might remember someone's initials, but not their full last name. When I want to see all the "K's", I want to see all the K's. All in all, I find it too foreign of a way to work to be truly comfortable. However, I do use it for my personal mail.

By the way, the argument about using them for hosted services isn't a showstopper for our business. We have 2 Exchange servers and I fully intend on moving them to some kind of hosted solution around the time Exchange 2010 comes out. We have 200 mail accounts or so and I don't really have a problem trading off the amount of administration for someone else taking care of the data.

PS. The killer app for me for the year is Google Voice. It's going to change how I work and I love it.

Re:Give me an alternative...

[MosesJones]

You get 25GB of storage with the corporate GMail account... I'm at the rather high level of email by volume (PPTs, Visio, random people sending me pointless Mega-Zips) but 2.5GB a year doesn't sound too high.

The reason you have, and I had, all of those PST files is that one PST file can't be over 2GB and the search engines seem to prefer multiple small files anyway. Switching it all into a 25GB GMail account stops that problem and stops the "oh look time to create a new PST file".

For those of us who actually search back through time in emails its a mega boon, especially as you don't get the occasional "Oh sorry, we've just realised that your PST file is trashed for no apparent reason.... and we trashed it about 2 years ago but this is the first time you've accessed it since then so all the backups are also trash."

25GB of Email storage, its a wonderful thing.

Re:Proper operating systems...

[drinkypoo]

Linux's file dialogs are too obsolete to call it a modern operating system.

They don't seem notably different from, say, Vista's to me. Or for that matter, OSX's (except that I STILL find the multi-pane approach more confusing than just looking at a current folder... though the way Vista displays directory paths and lets me easily reselect any path element is beautiful.)

Can you please explain why a file dialog needs to do more than let me find a file with different folder views? Or what, specifically, is missing from the dialogs commonly used in KDE and GNOME applications?

What The Fuck?

[Colin Smith]

Linux's file dialogs

Really? That's it? That's all you can come up with?

All the current OS concepts of file management "suck donkey balls" as they say. You know what I want? A tag based filesystem. WTF should I have to manage directories?

 

Re:Proper operating systems...

[CAIMLAS]

What are you talking about, wrt W7 dialogs being so drastically superior to "Linux's file dialogs"?

KDE (the design's about 5+ years old at this point - since KDE 3):
http://commit-digest.org/issues/2007-01-14/files/katetest-kio_file.png

The 'file dialog' has been optionally "universalized" in KDE4 via dolphin: http://artipc10.vub.ac.be/serendipity/uploads/screenshots/kde4.1/kde4-desktop.jpg

Ok, so W7 finally gets similar functionality in a pre-release 7+ years after KDE had it.
http://blogs.msdn.com/yvesdolc/archive/2009/01/07/windows-7-libraries-and-the-common-file-dialog.aspx

Is there something significant I'm missing here, or are you just blowing smoke? The file dialog in W7 is not only almost identical to what KDE has had since early 2002 (no, I'm not claiming they 'stole' anything), but it's also a dialog lacking the vast majority of the function that KDE has in its dialog.

(Now, GTK2/GNOME, on the other hand, is a bit of an ugly kludge akin to the newer OSX Finder interface, but that is largely an argument of preference, I think.)

You want to talk about a crappy interface, let's take a look at the paragraph-of-irritation style "file copy" dialog in W7:

http://www.sevenforums.com/attachments/general-discussion/4566d1234384335-copy-replace-dialog-there-way-get-old-one-like-xp-screen2.png

Explain to me why I need 1"^2 icons, with sublimated text and the important bits shoved off into a corner or otherwise de-emphasized? It's almost as if they want you to just click "yes" and ignore what it says. How useless (and irritating). KDE4 isn't much better, but at least its evident where the better implementation came from (first):

http://imagebin.ca/img/8GQHAD.png

In closing, bitching about the file dialog (presumably in GNOME) as a reason why "linux" is not a modern operating system is comical, especially when the 'major look' as well as many of the nice-to-have features of W7 are (by the opinions of many MS and Linux fans alike) a near-copy of KDE 4 functionality/features/look/feel. And when you consider that it was only a couple years ago when MS got an actual security model on their desktop OS (which still doesn't really work properly). That seems like a pretty obvious requirement for a "modern operating system" to me.

This is part of my job, and no, we won't be switch

[taustin]

And it's got nothing to do with behavioral inertia. Cloud computing adds an additional point of failure. Right now, with Office, if our T-1 goes down, OK, we can't check our email, but we can keep doing other things, like work on spreadsheets to send out by email when the T-1 is back up. With cloud computing, when the T-1 is down, everything is down.

Yeah, I know, Google Apps has options for working offline, but then, what's the point? How is it different, at that point, from Office?

No thanks. I know how reliable T-1s are. Yeah, pretty reliable, but without offline capabilities, we're out of business.

(Plus, I think whoever wrote this has little idea how many business use apps that Google will never have any interest in duplicating, like our cash register functions, and frankly, it would be illegal for us to let them handle some of that information anyway.)

From a Google App User Viewpoint...

[SuperCharlie]

I have a very small business. I set up Google Apps and use the entire collection of services.

First off, I have found that it does not provide the same stability as Gmail. It looks the same, but is is definitely not the same. We have uptime issues, cross-cookie issues with igoogle and gmail and it is generally not as stable as any other email solution I have used including Exchange.

It is worth about what you pay for it.. we are under 50 accounts, so it is free. If it cost, I would pay $30 a month to a web provider for all you can eat email and be done with it.

Blame it on the rain! Conversion tools suck.

[michaelcole]

I just migrated from Gmail to Google Apps, and it sucked. There are no decent migration tools out there. You think that Google could migrate between it's own two platforms. I couldn't move my email rules (filters) automatically and have about 80. Anyways, Outlook-Exchange-Sharepoint is just a better product. I use Google cause it's free. Deal with it. Mike

Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's little stuff!

[King_TJ]

One of my friends just tried deploying Google Apps to their entire company, switching everyone off of Outlook for email. 95% of the people were perfectly ok with it (at least after a bit of "coaching" so they didn't fear the changes). The problem was with the remaining 5%, who tended to be corporate "big wigs" and top producing sales staff. They took issue with things most of us would consider so minor, it was ridiculous -- yet were difficult to impossible to change.

EG. One guy had a hard time with the idea that auto-quoting of email replies didn't retain the exact same format Outlook used. Google uses the old-fashioned (familiar to all of us in the BBS days) method of quoting with ">" signs in front of each line. The user just couldn't cope with that change, insisting it looked totally "unprofessional".

My Reasons why I would never recoomend Google Apps

[kzieli]

I'd never recommend use of google apps for a whole different set of reasons:

1. Your putting all your data on some one else's server without a contract.
2. Hence their is no uptime garantee
3. too many additional points of failure (now if ither google or your internet connection is down you can do nothing)
4. (from here) all your data ends up hosted in another country. Meaning the host is not bound by the same privacy laws as you are, which could cause you to be technically non compliant.

And why I personally don't use google apps:

1. Most of the time my laptop is not connected to the internet when I'm using
2. I run 64 bit Linux, for which there is no Google Gears.

All this recent talk of Google wanting to unseat Windows and yet so many of thier products currently require you to be using Windows in order to get full functionality.

Job Security

[deanston]

1). People debate the merits of different email systems as if none of their mail traffic ever goes outside of their firewall. The idea of internal message never leaking out is an illusion. 2). Company email maintenance is a big part of IT support. No manager will volunteer to give up that budget and personnel and lost of IT jobs. It's not user inertia. It is in-house IT inertia. 3) I haven't used MS Office for 3 years. Nobody in my office knows the difference in documents I create. 4) I've found Gmail faster and more responsive and have better uptime than my company's own corporate mail. 4) Since maintaining email and email data has become so expensive, my organization has severely limited the server storage capacity of each user - much less than Gmail. To ensure you do not lose your important messages and data our IT recommend you BACK UP THE MESSAGES ON YOUR OWN IN YOUR PC to save server room. Are you kidding me? Is this 2009 or 1999? Forget data security and backup issue on my desktop for a minute. It is not worth my time and I think it is a ridiculous use of my time at my hourly rate when there are other project priorities and deadlines. 5) Using email as part of your project workflow is just plain wrong. Any important notes and work orders should be in a real project management system. 6) Outlook is the principle carrier of viruses. 7) If your organization cannot keep an Internet line up 99.99% of the time in this day and age, you've got bigger underlying fundamental problems than just email and local apps.

Searchability

[Nerdposeur]

A few days ago at work I was looking for an Outlook email conversation from maybe 6 months prior. Spent several minutes and couldn't find it, meaning I have to repeat some work, which costs the company.

If I open my personal Gmail, I can find a 4-year-old congratulatory email from my brother in about 5 seconds with a simple search.

My company would be better served by the searchability Gmail offers. Whatever other obstacles there are, that's a great benefit.