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Google Apps Premier Edition Launches, Widely Used
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 23, 2007 09:53 AM
from the whatever-works dept.
from the whatever-works dept.
Tookis writes "Google's online productivity suite (Google Apps) has already replaced Microsoft products at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises. Additionally, it's been deployed for serious work-related projects at two of the largest companies in the world. Product manager for Google Enterprise Kevin Gough was quick to point out that although the premier edition of Google Apps only just launched, it's already been adopted by companies like GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. He goes on to describe the role of Apps: to augment, not necessarily replace existing IT solutions. Just the same, he says, the role of Apps can be powerful where traditional services may be too expensive. Says Gough, 'There's a large segment that's under-served by today's productivity tools. Production workers and retail employees for instance. 48% of all employees actually don't even have an email address. That's because the cost of hardware, software and maintenance has made it prohibitively expensive to provide email to employees.'"
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Return of the terminal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Return of the terminal (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you tried using Google Calendar? It is by far the MOST usable calendar app I have ever seen. Forget about forms. It's the only calendar app I've ever used that's actually intuitive. I can simply type "Dentist appointment on 2/24 from 10:00am to 11:00am at 1315 New Hampshire Ave" and GCal parses all this info into the appropriate chunks (date, time, location, etc) and stores it.
Last time I looked, it's the fat client that's stupid here. Outlook or GroupWise makes me jump through hoops on their forms. Tab to date, tab to time, tab to location, click and drag little widgets. It's Outlook and Groupwise that are using 1972-style forms. All they've done is put some pretty pictures on the forms and made them largely mouse-based (which actually makes them HARDER to use than 1972-style dumb terminal forms!)
Bad user interfaces are unfortunately quite common, but it's not a fat vs thin client thing. Google right now is an interface innovator. I'll take GCal, with its ability to quickly type in an appointment, over Outlook or GroupWise any day.
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Re:Return of the terminal (Score:5, Funny)
That dentist is no good. There's a much better one at 21st and K NW.
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Re:Return of the terminal (Score:5, Interesting)
Which seems a terrible shame really - surely there are better ways of running an application over a network than via a browser. After years of using the network transparency of X11 I find this whole move to browser based applications disappointing. Sure, the X protocol doesn't work well over slower connections (it's too chatty), but really wouldn't it be better to just fix those issues (such as with FreeNX) or write a better system so that we can actually have full normal GUIs instead of whatever can be kluged into a browser? Given the prevalence of web based applications I guess the answer is no. My best guess as to why is that, simply, Windows lack of network transparent display and market dominance trained people to have low expectations. Browser based stuff looks good in comparison to what's generally available for Windows so people assume it is a step forward instead of the step sideways that it appears to be to me.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Browser apps look better than most Windows apps? What are you smoking? X applications are hardly the benchmark for GUI quality either.
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X11 is a complete failure over the Internet. It's not just securing the protocol, that could be layered on. The problem is deeper; X11 is overly synchronized. Try running a web browser across the Internet using X. It's unusable. The first time you get an animated banner, it stalls, uploading every frame in full. Now try VNC (or even Remote Desktop on Windows), it works fine. You only s
really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:really? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, if their product manager is this delusional, I'm seriously reconsidering my optimism about these apps every being improved enough to completely replace MS Office. We can only hope he's replaced with someone good when he's inevitably institutionalized.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)
In practice, both Google and Microsoft won't do such things, because (1) 'ripping the service out from under clients' (as you well put it) just isn't good business, and (2) contracts. A contract with Google will ensure a certain service for some-odd years, just like a contract with Microsoft. No more, and no less.
However, you are 100% right about both of them - even if it is unlikely that these doomsday scenarios occur, they are possible. Entrusting your IT over to Google (by hosting it on their servers) or to Microsoft (by running their closed-source programs, and in addition being locked-in to them) is somewhat a 'leap of faith'. For those that value their personal autonomy, there are really only two options: in-house development, which is completely impractical for 99% of organizations, or using open-source software (as people reading this know already).
Yet, the Microsoft and Google solutions will, I predict, continue to draw the vast majority of businesses: Microsoft are already entrenched, and Google are so ridiculously cheap it seems a crime not to use their service.
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Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the checkout girl at the grocery store need email?
How about the house painter?
Or the guy that tears tickets in half at the movie theater?
Is that the target market? I'm sure Microsoft is quaking in their boots about the prospect that they missed out on getting McDonalds to shell out for Exchange licenses for all their employees...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's figure the cost of a printed page (offset, NOT laser) at half a cent. Maybe distribution and all that brings it up to a penny (we'll call it 5 cents PER PAGE to be on the absurdly high side). Figure that McDonalds gives each employee 20 pages of documents, that's 1 dollar per employee for all the communications they require to do their jobs.
Now figure a computer for $300, DSL for $40 per month.
Say there's 40 employees there that share the single computer. A
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Result: Modded -5, Troll
bullshit or not (Score:5, Interesting)
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Google Apps seems like a really great idea for Universities. We spend SO much money on MS Office and related products.
Umm...why didn't you install OpenOffice?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're in school for christ sake, how about have a class or two about the libre software tools in the 100 level?
Umm, how does this help mitgate any of the points I made?
The rest of your comment is nonsense. There are plenty of schools that have made the move to libre software already. And they haven't collapsed in upon themselves as you are alluding.
I never said they would collapse, I simply pointed out some of the many reasons why Google Docs is more suited to the academic setting than OpenOffice. Calling someone an idiot because they did not move to OpenOffice instead is what is nonsense.
As for the mac users, isn't there a port of OpenOffice to that already?
Sure there is. It is just immensely slow. It is actually faster for me to run the Linux native version in Kubuntu, in a VM running on top of OS X, than it is for me to run the last version of NeoOffice
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
People should realize there is more to "free software" than not having to pay money to use it.
Tom
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The reason Universities spend SO much money on MS Office and related products is because MS Office programs are used in the overhwelming[sic] majority of businesses.
So you're telling me that five years after a user graduates their skills using MS Office products will be more valuable and translate better to whatever the most popular office tool of the day is than using Google Docs? How do you know that by the time they graduate Google Docs won't be the standard? When I was in school the word processor of choice was WordPerfect, does that hinder my ability to use MS Word somehow? For the most part a word processor is a word processor. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. I
O RLY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe, just maybe, 48% of all employees don't need email to get their jobs done. I know, it sounds heretical, but let's be honest, does K-Fed really need email to operate that McDonald's cash register? Nah, I didn't think so either.
Very skeptical about these numbers (Score:2)
Retail Employees with Email? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you want your retail employees to have email? Is it really necessary for the cashier at Wal*Mart to have their own email address when they're probably only going to work there for a few months?
Re:Retail Employees with Email? (Score:4, Informative)
Email is useful even for a casher. They check it from home and get their schedule, information on company events, and so on.
They my not use it at the store but they may still use it.
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Security breach coming to a company near you! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bottom line, real companies don't want their confidential documents floating around willy-nilly in the "cloud". And to have 2 systems (one desktop based for confidential, and "cloud" bas
Data under Google's care - Guaranteed? (Score:5, Interesting)
that massive sucking sound? (Score:2)
open source + web services vice (Score:3)
And they're stepping up the "veiled threats" against open source software.
Oh, I give it about 3 to 5 years before MS goes superSCOva.
Re:open source + web services vice (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us take for example the vendor lock and switching costs. You can get decent oil change for your car for 20$. 10$ if you really clip coupons and are willing to let Joe's QuickLube to do it. And most car dealers charge 30$ for the very same service. Still there are millions of car owners who would happily pay 30$ to the dealer willingly.
Now take a look at how difficult it is to use a competing product instead of Microsoft. The switching costs are high and there is very heavy vendor lock. In 5 years, the marketplace might become more level. Finally the corporations might start demanding true interoperability. MS might lose market share. From 90% share in Office and 80-85% share in browsers and 95% share in computers, it might go down. How low will it go, I cant guess. May be to 50%. May be to 33%. The profitability also might suffer. But after all is said and done, MS will still have decent market share and a decent profit making business. Look around, IBM is still around, isn't it? It was the IBM dinosaur around which nimble Microsoft ran circles around. 10 years from now there will be three dinosaurs, IBM, MSFT and GOOG. And there will be another nimble player.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
Not at P&G (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not at P&G (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly the point I was trying to allude to in an earlier post I made when I mentioned Excel's formula language. In any large enough organization, there is likely enough business intelligence coded into Excel spreadsheets by people who no longer work there that trying to convert all of it onto another platform would be ridiculous.
I've seen the argument that a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, and if you're starting from scratch, I think that is true. But a Google spreadsheet is not the same as a 20 page, fully formulated, linked to external datasources (via ODBC, SQL on the backend anyone?) Excel monster. And speaking of which, what do you do if you're using Google apps and you want to link to external data in say, an SQL server? Excel has great built in wizards that will link to just about any data source imaginable. Is Google going to port all of my financial data over there for me so that I can "access it from anywhere?"
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It replaces POP3 accounts, not Microsoft Office (Score:5, Insightful)
The calendar part is getting better and better, especially the arrival of syncmycal has improved integration with MS Outlook, but it surely doesn't replace it, yet, because Google Calendar cannot sync with everything, yet.
We're looking forward to use docs and spreadsheets, but it's still just an add-on to our existing in-house software.
For the small company (Score:3, Interesting)
As I see that it would be hard for Enterprises, of any moderate size, to store any remotly sensitive data on googles disks. In their case it would mostly be used as a way to work together, and then one might ask if gotomeeting or any other internet meeting service + openoffice/office/staroffice is a better solution. I guess time will tell...
I wish (Score:3, Informative)
I was using the google aps for a while and was very happy about the prospect. However, on many occasions, right when I really needed to get at something, google aps were simply broken. I'm sure you've seen gmail get into a confused state where you cannot log in. This usually results in you having to clear your browser cache and delete all cookies, though this doesn't always work. Google makes some change somewhere, and then after a while they figure it out and fix it. But they never tell you when to expect downtime. Google just rolls out new code whenever they feel like it and you wind up suffering.
Until they start to run their services more like a production IT shop, I can't see how anyone can run a business on it.
Been using the free version for months (Score:3, Informative)
We have two locations and this helps bridge the gap between the offices ( I also use Hamachi for remote connectivity)
So far we use gmail, cal and just starting to use docs and spreadsheets.
complete and absolute BS (SOX) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:complete and absolute BS (SOX) (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Small businesses don't care about SOX.
2. Google will beef up the service to meet the needs of publicly traded companies, thus making the Google option so much cheaper than managing the IT part of SOX compliance on your own that companies will have no choice but to use a hosted service.
3. SOX is going away because it blows and it's driving companies away from our stock markets.
Parent
Sorry dude, you're misinformed (Score:4, Insightful)
2. I can see your point that Google apps may not be compatible with SOX, but this would matter only to publicly traded companies.
3. You haven't been paying attention to the news. I've seen multiple stories about SOX causing many small publicly traded companies to delist from the stock market and go private, and how it's causing businesses to skip the US stock markets when it comes time for them to do their IPO. In other words, yes, there's a general feeling that SOX is driving business away from the US. Here's an example article I found through a very quick search: Is SOX Driving Small Companies Overseas? [cfo.com]
SOX seems to be too onerous on most companies, and only the largest ones can properly put up the effort to meet its requirements. I'm not an expert, so I'm going by what I've read and heard on the news, and by the huge amount of IT changes that SOX has caused at my work. I'm as anti-corporate as they come, and I can see that SOX is having some negative effects. I think he's right that something is going to change.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Hundreds of thousands of companies have, in the past day and a half, switched their entire office infrastructure
in related news: Chairs Seen Flying in Redmond
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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I seriously doubt pharmacological, banking, automotive, airline-manufacturing (whether ci
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You Linux freaks can foam at the mouth trying to convince anyone that Linux + open office will be widely adopted by corporates. People that actually work in corporates and support infrastructure, will never let that amateur junk in.
Some of us linux freaks don't care whether corporates adopt it or not. I'm a little curious about the source of your hostility though.. what did oss do to get your panties in such a bunch?
Re:No real threat (Score:5, Insightful)
I use LaTeX for pretty much all my document needs so I don't have a real vested interest in OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office, but it really isn't fair to call OO amateur. It did start life as a commerical product. And is the opposite of commercial really amateur? gcc is not a commercial compiler, but it certainly not amateur and has been used in lots of serious situations.
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Re:No real threat (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Exchange yes, Office no (Score:5, Informative)
That really depends on your needs. I know of some small offices that have relatively light office application needs and would be just fine replacing MS Office with Google Apps. For any major company it is clearly a no go because Google Apps just doesn't have all the required functionality. Indeed most of MS Office's market won't be able to make the switch. MS Office has a very big market though, and a lot of users simply don't need all the functionality it offers. Those that can get by with Google Apps instead may be a very small percentage of the MS Office market, but they may still be reasonably large numbers in absolute terms.
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