And adopt the Office 2007 System

Sep 11, 2007 14:47 GMT  ·  By

Google Apps and the Microsoft Office 2007 System have been sicced each other as rivals and with both the Mountain View and the Redmond companies failing to share a common perspective on either the two solutions are indeed competing. While Google Apps and Office 2007 indeed share some examples of functionality, Microsoft has always downplayed the relevance of the Mountain View's set of online services and products designed to be an alternative to its own productivity suite. One area where indeed Microsoft has the advantage is the enterprise environment. Google Apps has failed as far to be adopted in corporate ecosystems at a large scale, still closely dependent on Microsoft's Office, and essentially was a collection of offerings aimed at small businesses. The agreement Google inked with Capgemini comes to change all that.

The Mountain View search giant will from now have Capgemini to lobby the uptake of Google Apps to corporations. And in this context, Capgemini serves both Office 2007 and Google Apps as complementary and not rival products to the same customers. Microsoft was not happy to see its Software plus Services vision (Office + Office Live) mixed with Google's Software as Service business model (Google Apps) and issued a response. One thing that the Redmond failed to comment about is the fact that Capgemini, one of its partners is now also batting for Google.

"We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need. This is validated in the strong reception we?ve seen to 2007 adoption and usage and by having achieved more than 90% enterprise agreement renewal in the fourth quarter of our last fiscal year. Our long history in meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers, a partner ecosystem that has grown 43% on the Office platform since last year and our current and future investments in the software + services arena will deliver even more flexibility to customers," a Microsoft representative stated in an unsolicited email sent to Mary Jo Foley.

The Redmond company also revealed its own perspective over Google Apps in a list of no less than 10 reasons that you can find included below.

"1. Google touts having enterprise level customers but how many "USERS" of their applications truly exist within the enterprise?

2. Google has a history of releasing incomplete products, calling them beta software and issuing updates on a "known only to Google" schedule ? this flies in the face of what enterprises want and need in their technology partners ? what is Google doing that indicates they are in lock step with customer needs?

3. Google touts the low cost of their apps ?not only price but the absence of need for hardware, storage or maintenance for Google Apps. BUT if GAPE is indeed a complement to MSFT Office, the costs actually become greater for a company as they now have two IT systems to run and manage and maintain. Doesn?t this result in increased complexity and increased costs?

4. Google?s primary focus is on ad funded search. Their enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1% of the company?s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut down given it will them in a minimal and short term way? Should customers trust that this won?t happen?

5. Google?s apps only work if an enterprise has no power users, employees are always online, enterprises haven?t built custom Office apps ? doesn?t this equal a very small % of global information workers today? ?On a feature comparison basis, it?s not surprising that Microsoft has a huge lead.

6. Google apps don?t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, tables of content, footnotes, etc. Additionally, while customers can collaborate on basic docs without the above noted features, to collaborate on detailed docs, a company must implement a two part process ? work together on the basic doc, save it to Word or Excel and then send via email for final edits. Yes they have a $50 price tag, but with the inefficiencies created by just this one cycle, how much do GAPE really cost ? and can you afford the fidelity loss?

7. Enterprise companies have to constantly think about government regulations and standards ? while Google can store a lot of data for enterprises on Google servers, there is no easy to use, automated way for enterprises to regularly delete data, issue a legal hold for specific docs or bring copies into the corp. What happens if a company needs to respond to government regulations bodies? Google touts 99.9% uptime for their apps but what few people realize that promise is for Gmail only. Equally alarming is the definition Google has for "downtime" ? ten consecutive minutes of downtime. What happens if throughout the day Google is down 7 minutes each hour? What does 7 minutes each hour for a full work day that cost an enterprise?

8. In the world of business, it is always on and always connected. As such, having access to technical support 24/7 is essential. If a company deploys Google Apps and there is a technical issue at 8pm PST, Sorry. Google?s tech support is open M-F 1AM-6PM PST ? are these the new hours of global business? And if a customer?s "designated administrator" is not available (a requirement) does business just stop?

9. Google says that enterprise customers use only 10% of the features in today?s productivity applications which implies that EVERYONE needs the SAME 10% of the feature when in fact it is very clear that in each company there are specific roles people play that demands access to specific information ? how does Google?s generic strategy address role specific needs?

10. With Google apps in perpetual beta and Google controlling when and if they rollout specific features and functionality, customers have minimal if any control over the timing of product rollouts and features ? how do 1) I know how to strategically plan and train and 2) get the features and functionality I have specifically requested? How much money does not knowing cost?"