Outlook Inertia the Main Factor Holding Business From Google Apps 394
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.'"
Same old story, same old song and dance... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Replacing Outlook and Office are the key apps (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Same old story, same old song and dance... (Score:5, Interesting)
{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. :/
Re:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby! (Score:1, Interesting)
I use Outlook at work and it's shit. Searching email is really slow, and you can sense all the bloat as you do anything - the options I want are always hidden somewhere. I used google desktop for a while and amused myself with how fast it was finding emails and files, but in the end I gave up because of limits on how many files it indexes (why is there a limit?), and because it (twice) caused my PC to slow down unusably. Also, I had to fiddle with the registry to make it index more file types. Then again, you have to do that sort of thing with Windows to get it to index files. Why is it apparently so hard to know what's on your own, local hard drive? I don't get it. I have the CPU and disk space for indexes.
Re:Secrecy (Score:1, Interesting)
I work at a mid-sized American university. We recently transitioned some 30000 email accounts to Google. Many other universities have done/are doing the same. Personally, I trust Google more than I trust the average IT department.
Re:You can use outlook (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Happened here with a different solution (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
There's an App for That (Score:4, Interesting)
Right here [google.com].
Quoting the Google:
Oh, and it works with all editions of Google Apps, both free and paid, and it costs $0 extra.
You're welcome.
Re:You can use outlook (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Condescending comments like this make me laugh (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby! (Score:3, Interesting)
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:You can use outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby! (Score:3, Interesting)
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:You can use outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
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:GMail is a joke compared to Outlook (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You can use outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
Lotus Notes.
That said, using Notes makes the Outlook/Exchange experience look like the best thing since sliced bread.
From a Google App User Viewpoint... (Score:4, Interesting)
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. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Condescending comments like this make me laugh (Score:3, Interesting)
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:You can use outlook (Score:2, Interesting)
The point you just made is "inability to control your data".
This is precisely why a lot of people want to move AWAY from Microsoft.
As for 'where' your data is located - but even then, there's no physical barrier preventing Microsoft to having the same access to your email as Google would. True, data kept on Google's server might "seem" easier, but Microsoft has played along with US government (and other governments, if it helps sell their systems elsewhere).
You might feel safe behind your LAN based Exchange server and ISA firewall, but if Microsoft "wants" to get your email, remotely fetching it is only slightly more difficult for them than it would be if you hosted mail on someone's servers. I am suggesting that neither Microsoft nor Google snoops this type of data, but you're suggesting only Google "could" while I am saying both could, easily.
If you want to "control" your data, you need open source systems, on hardened open source OSS, and you follow other best practices like sandboxing your servers. That's probably overkill for many, but it is misleading to suggest that a LAN based Exchange server might be more secure/private than something hosted on Google, and it is that point I am responding to.
Re:GMail is a joke compared to Outlook (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's little stuff! (Score:3, Interesting)
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".
You can do it does not justify doing it (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at iphone:
the good old simple protocol approach for mail against fancy browser base mail client.
Why we need a complicate platform bound javascript or flash applications?
If browser-based-os means we edit the data on the browser in place without needing a platform bound fragile editor loading from server, that is a good step forward. The browser should be a read/write device. Multiple protocol, multiple format, portable, easy to develop for. Not a in-compatible fancy jungle.
Re:You can use outlook (Score:2, Interesting)
What I don't get is why don't they make a Google Apps Appliance, similar to what they did with their search.
Searchability (Score:3, Interesting)
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.