ZDNet.co.uk — Google Apps Go Pro

Nicholas Carlson — 22 February 2007

Google took its Web-based applications to the big leagues today with Google Apps Premier Edition, a suite of hosted applications targeted at the same enterprise market traditionally dominated by Microsoft Office.

Google Apps Premier Edition, which will cost businesses $50 per user account per year, includes Google Calendar, as well as the company’s Gmail e-mail application and its Google Talk instant messaging client. It also includes Google Docs and Spreadsheets, word processing and spreadsheet applications geared for collaboration between users. Google’s mobile e-mail application is also now available on BlackBerry devices.

The success or otherwise of these services depend, it seems to me, on these questions:
1. Are end users, system administrators and IT budget holders sufficiently unhappy with owning and using the Microsoft Office products to want to change?
2. Are people apprehensive about what a commitment to MS Office entails with respect to the Vista operating system?
3. Are enough of those people on a good enough Internet link to make remotely-hosted desktop software a workable possibility? Can they trust the programs to be available?
4. Are enough of these people willing to trust personal and corporate data to a system hosted by a third party?

Last December, I put the last question to Roberto Solimene, Google’s Enterprise Director Europe. He recognised that his company would need to “calm corporate nervousness” but felt certain it would. There are already, he pointed out, successful online services companies in whom corporate users trust. Two examples he gave are Salesforce.com, the CRM services supplier (which Google itself uses) and Postini (with which it partners), which provides message security and management. Also, many thousands of individuals trust their email traffic to Google Mail.

Coincident with the launch of Apps Premier Edition, Google has just issued a note on the security implications of using its software.

The Google belief is, clearly, that the answers to all four questions are favourable enough to make its offerings commercially viable in due course. It reasons that $600 a year for each user is cheap compared with the installation, upgrading, licensing and support costs of hosting MS Office internally. Also, it is seemingly not bothered by the early success of Microsoft’s Office Live beta.

You can get Google Apps Premium Edition here, on free trial (except domain names) until the end of April this year.

Much ink and many pixels will be devoted to the battle between these two giant organizations. My feeling is that Google Apps will initially prove popular with SMEs (small-to-medium-sized enterprises) and that it will be a few months at least before many large Microsoft Office shops convert.

When and if that happens, the real fight will start — and it will get dirty. Google Apps are a pimple on the elephant’s backside for Google, which still gets over 95% of its income from online advertising. MS Office, on the other hand, provides an important income stream for Microsoft, one it will protect vigorously.

Meanwhile, where are Yahoo! and its new best friend, IBM?