Google Goes After Microsoft With Software Suite Out Today – Technology – RedOrbit — This needs looking into.
Google is getting serious about taking on Microsoft.
Today, it introduces Google Apps Premium Edition, a software suite for companies that provides e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, word processing and spreadsheets. The cost is $50 per worker per year vs. about $500-$600 for Microsoft Office.
“The price point is unbelievable,” says Erica Driver, an analyst at market tracker Forrester Research.
Jim Murphy, an analyst at AMR Research, calls Google’s enterprise product “the biggest threat to Microsoft” since the 1990s, when Microsoft duked it out with Lotus Notes. But now 68% of large companies use Office, compared with 27% for Lotus, he says.
Two versions of Google Apps Premium (www.google.com/a) are available. There’s a free, ad-supported version with 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage, or the premium $50 version, with 10 GB.
found by Chet heath
It is a bit of a stretch to call Google’s spreadsheet or word processor serious competitors to Excel and Word. OpenOffice.org could be a threat though.
And the first question to be asked? Does it work with an Exchange server.
I agree with Al’s point, Google Docs and Spreadsheets are just missing too much functionality. Why pay $50 a month for an office suite when you can get one for free? On the other hand, they’re positioning themselves well inside of a niche market.
Knowing Google they will turn around and index+publish all that private corporate data on the web. Would love to get hits on searches like “bill gates hooker expense budget”.
You need to have your own domain name to subscribe to Google Apps. If you don’t, you’ll have to get one.
Maybe this is the first step to everybody having a domain name in a couple years time!
No, Google Docs and Spreadsheets are no match to Word and Excel, but most people use only 2 or 3% of those apps capabilities.
Google apps has the advantage of being available wherever there’s a net connection – good for mobile workers, teleworkers, anyone who goes away from their desks.
It’s a great first step!
#2, you don’t need an expensive exchange server, thats the whole point. Google hosts your email, calendar and contacts, which you access through the web. If you have to use exchange, then you wouldn’t want to use this service.
Can you store any files bigger than a half a meg yet?
#6 – The problem with that thinking is the target audience for this product: Businesses. Most businesses use Exchange, so by your definition most businesses would never, and will never, consider this as a viable option.
#3 better be right, because “niche” is best they can do.
We have been using google calc in my enterprise. We use it as an easy way to share spreadsheets accross all our locations.
To compare it to excell is to miss the point. It is something new and different.
Most businesses use Exchange
James Hill, maybe they wouldn’t if they like Google’s service considering how over priced Exchange it. The point of Google’s service is to give users a choice over M$ overpriced products. Not every company needs or can afford a full blown Exchange server. Now they have a viable choice, something M$ hates.
If this is successful, people are truely stupid..
Imagine the first hacker that gets into the files..
Imagine how slow file moving will be .. lame..
50$! I woudn’t use it for free!
#10
Actually, as far as business software goes, Exchange specifically, and Microsoft generally, are quite inexpensive. But even then, its not how much software costs, it is more a function of how much money the software makes (or saves).
Back in the 90’s when companies were migrating to windows from the mini computers they used previously, they made huge gains in cost, and training, and were able to easily perform whole new operations that were never possible before.
That is also why there is no business migration occuring to OSX now. While OSX might be better than windows in some areas, they are not activities that are generally likely to produce new income, or save huge amounts of cash. The case could be made that a migration would cost more money than it is ever likey make or save.
These google apps get kudos from be because they offer the ease and fexibility of web mail to traditional office apps. If google makes money with them, you can count on google addressing the outside needs of their customers. Right now they remain simple primitive applications.
I’m in some agreement with Wayne. I generally do not like web apps if I can have a local app — because of the latency.
#3 You can use all these service for FREE, you only get like 2 gigs per account (10 for premium) but can still use a majority of the services, including docs and spread sheet. It may not be the best solution for everyone, but for a small company starting out it can be very useful, and the premium version being much cheaper the exchange doesn’t hurt either
I have been using this service for about 2 months now and love it. I am still a fan of Outlook, since it syncs with my PDA, but do prefer google’s calendar, just haven’t found any good and working freeware to sync my ipaq to my ical (too many i’s these days!)
Sir, I know a great way to save us money!
How?
Let’s use google?
What’s the downside?
None… except well a third party now holds all our data, and um… we can’t do as much as with these other products, and um if our net connection goes down we are screwed, and if some dones’t have net access we are um screwed..
Are you out of your mind! Your fired!
#10, #12 – At the end of the day it’s a fairly simple issue, if there was a decent ROI on a move away from Exchange, Office or Windows, people would have already done it with open source Linux applications. The fact of the matter is that there is no short term ROI to the move, so IT departments aren’t going to propose it.
#11, #13 – Isn’t this why all dumb terminal/web applcation/centralized file storage arguments fail… and fail so quickly? The delivery mechanisms used for online applications simply cannot compete to the established method of using a locally stored application or file.
I tend to agree with wanting data stored locally, and using an actual client application. My case and utility is different.
I have about 20 different locations. The google calc data file we share is updated the moment we change it. We are not however doing serious number crunching in calc. We are using calc as a communication medium. It is not worthwhile for us to set up a hosted IIS+exchange+excell solution, becuase this is a short term use of the datafile. This is our solution until we find a centrally managed solution. Also for this application 2GB is wildly more than enough. If we ever need more than that, it is nice to know that we can upgrade.
I have considered the privacy and security implications of google calc. I don’t really see the issue.
Isn’t this why all dumb terminal/web applcation/centralized file storage arguments fail… and fail so quickly?
Really? I thought is was the lower cost of PCs as opposed to mainframes. And centralized file storage? Isn’t that how your basic office file server works.
#17 – No one is arguing that your use case doesn’t match what Google provides quite well. What we are saying is that your use case is the minority, and not the majority (who need security, and scalable storage, for example).
#18 – Yes, which only means that there’s going to be a server setup of some sort in either environment… either Exchange servers or Application servers. The cost of replacing PCs with dumb terminals balances out the cost of increated server requirements, so that argument is moot.
#12: there is nothing primitive about Gmail. It’s far and away the best email UI I’ve ever used, and I’ll never go back to Outlook unless I have to. The Docs and Spreadsheets are somewhat primitive, I agree, but for simple, fast collaboration, it seriously competes with the Outlook process of attaching versioned and marked up copies of Word docs. This could catch on.
If the telecommuting is the future with energy prices rising, then even small businesses will have “20 locations”, and will already be completely dependent on internet availability for their business. To completely eliminate the IT department and server farms and MS licenses and network headaches adds up to a big competitive advantage. Lets not forget that this is a worldwide offering. It may look like a niche market, but that is really a huge niche.
Security is only an issue as the product was introduced. There is no technical reason why the Google Office protocol and applications cannot be implemented on secure servers on intranets within the enterprise.
Key is getting Google Office training in the hearts and minds of millions.
All they need is a user base trained on their application, some time to mature the applications and a better price to win. Google Office does not have to be better than Microsoft Office to win competitively, it just has to offer a satisfactory level of fuction at a good value for the average person. They aren’t there yet, but they could be soon.
If so it will move trillions upon trillions of compute cycles off the desktops and onto servers. It is not MS Office alone who should worry, it is the Windows foundation and Intel that depend on residual planned obsolescence on the desktop for their annuity.
Right now I hate Microsoft and love Google. I suppose I’m going to start hating Google soon!
I think Google would have been better off using Open Office as the base and tying their web mail and calendering into the suite. OO has a following already, is easy and relatively intuitive. Why would anyone already using OO, and Thunderbird want to be charged $50 / year and be tied to the internet?