Google Apps in the Enterprise

I found it interesting how Google wants to move its apps from the edge of its business model to the center. Before reading this article, I wouldn't have even though Google apps were on the edge of the business model, more like out in the parking lot and off the radar. I was not surprised to learn that for their enterprise apps, they currently hand the production consumer apps to the business division for use as the Enterprise apps. Problem is, this requires extensive rework. If they continue this model, their SaaS apps will have a hard time taking market share away from established competitors.

Microsoft will not lose the large volume licensing institutions that license thousands of copies of their enterprise software, including large public companies, government, and educational entities. Of course I don't believe Google is truly targeting them because all the shortcomings discussed in the article are too much for large enterprises to overcome, whether the shortcoming is real or just perceived by IT management. They will be more likely to lose low volume, basic computer users who just need word and/or excel and/or outlook. These are the home users and small businesses who are stuck purchasing a $350-$400 software package for each new employee who needs to use Word and/or Excel only.

One feature talked about that I don't believe is a desired feature is that GAPE offers concurrent collaboration on documents and Office doesn't. Working in small, large, educational, and government institutions I've never once had a need for that.

One thing not discussed at all in the article is the potential disruption to current workstation life cycles within companies. By moving the data processing off the desktop, the life cycle of a workstation could be greatly increased, decreasing IT costs for companies. Google could also be disrupting the PC market inadvertently.

Because I am an IT consultant and have access to users at various types of organizations, mostly smaller to medium sized businesses, I decided to call around today and investigate the type of interest these products might have over their current (MS Office) solutions. I was surprised by the fact that only one of the my clients was even aware that Google offered any apps. So right there, Google has an awareness problem in one potential market segment. After describing the product to my clients, there was definately some interest, not surprisingly by the people who pay the bills. They are consistently frustrated with purchasing even the Office Small Business because thay pay for products they don't use, or use extremely rarely. In addition, their company may only utilize 5%-10% of the features of the Office programs, so the idea of paying $50/user for the stripped down applications was intriguing to them. I was instructed by several of my clients to keep them abreast of updates for future consideration. One big selling point was the ability to leave documents on the server to be retrieved anywhere as long as there is an internet connection. For small business with several offices, this could save them thousands on site-to-site VPN and expensive network solutions.