Google Gains A Big Enterprise Ally
Duncan Riley
26 comments »
Google is yet to finalize its office suite (powerpoint is on the way), but it now has a major ally in distributing it to big enterprise customers.
CapGemini, who control a million or so enterprise desktops and are one of the largest IT consulting businesses, will offer Google Apps to its clients. Google Apps include services such as email, calendar, word processing and spreedsheets.
CapGemini, which has distributed desktop applications from Microsoft and IBM (Lotus Notes) for years (and will continue to do so), says this is the move towards the trend of “team productivity.” Traditional Microsoft products, they say, are geared towards individual productivity. What they are referring to is Google Docs’ most important feature - the ability for users to collaborate over documents online, and simultaneously.
CapGemini will collect a £25 licence fee for each install, plus additional fees for service and maintenance.
This is a big step for Google, but there’s one little problem, as Nick Carr points out: the security issues around Google Docs remain. All documents are stored on Google’s servers, which is a big problem for Sarbanes Oxley strapped public companies. Noticeably absent from the announcement were any customer announcements, for the simple reason that there are none of note yet. A large telco is supposedly ready to install Google Docs on some of its desktops this month, though. Google will certainly announce that when it happens.
Google still has a long way to go before it makes any kind of dent in Microsoft’s $12 billion/year Office revenues. But the future of Office documents is becoming increasingly clear - online collaboration is the killer app, not the number of new fonts and features in this year’s version of Word.
I’d prefer less of big brother Google and more open source, like Thunderbird and Open Office… they both need improvement, but that’s what open source is good at… making iterative and incremental improvements. -chrisco
ya but gmail and gdocs are still NOT compatible for copying and pasting - you end up realigning and resizing everything. SO ANNOYING!! How hard can that be Google? Let’s go already.
It’s another strong partner after they partner with Sun for Star Office! The are going to be a serious contender in office docs processing and collaboration shortly.
Once Google adds Jotspot and Presentations, it will be a great tool for companies. I also like Zoho, they have complete Office set.
These apps need to be off-line for enterprise usage.
Until Google integrates Google Gears into apps its going to be almost impossible for anyone to pitch this to enterprise or small business
Welldone Big G!! hmm.. £25/install? Gosh!
http://www.techtalkz.com
i am using google aps for months. i think google still need to work more on it because formating is a big issue in google aps. its seems like im back to the software of the 90s.
I agree and do not think that Google Apps is ready for enterprise level.
- Offline issue (mobile workers)
- Security issue (sarbox)
- Spreadsheet performance (marcos, linked spreadsheets etc)
- printer unfriendly documents (the paperless enterprise is not out there)
In addition I think 25GBP per desktop is very high - good negotiation from Cap Gemeni here.
On the other hand I don’t doubt that Google could build an enterprise level office application (they might already have) - but the way we know google apps today, I do not see it replacing current office application solutions.
I am still trying to convince myself that I don’t need MS Office, but it is getting harder and harder…
This offering will continue to see very poor enterprise-adoption until a true enterprise-class service level agreement is in place. No enterprise is going to its core desktop services until it has the commitment from the vendor/service that the service will be available. For most companies today, desktop apps such as Microsoft Office and Lotus still keep the companies going through ad-hoc workflow and information sharing, so productivity apps are critical to the business.
Why use Google anyway. When there is Bluetie
Corporations facing an expensive forced upgrade to Vista & the latest iteration of MS Office are going to look more closely at alternatives than they might otherwise, which is good for Google.
I personally don’t find Google Apps useful for anything more than the most basic work. And until they can be a complete replacement for their desktop versions, I’m not moving, because keeping some documents online and others off depending on what functionality I need, is even worse than the status quo.
>> CapGemini will collect a £25 licence fee for each install
>> A large telco is supposedly ready to install Google Docs on some of its desktops this month
Doesn’t Google Apps run on a browser & requires no install? Think ‘user accounts’ is a better way of wording this than ‘desktop installs’
This stuff will make your Vista installation unstable, stay away from it!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Yeah I dont think Google’s offering is as feature rich as the others like ZOHO. However they being Google, this is significant.
Not even a day has passed and this news has drawn heat from Microsoft and Zimbra. Check it out
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/200...../#more-214
Google Docs is a piece of crap. And obviously you do not know anything about how Office functions in the enterprise. Who told you fonts is the reason enterprise upgrade their office?
The collaboration of Office and MOSS is hard rock solid unlike you’re crappy Google apps.
Google apps works best for elementary school papers.
Next time, do your research first because it is so irritating how you glorify Google docs and belittle Ms Word when in fact you know nothing about it.
capgem’s working this in europe.
in europe, there is no sarbOx.
there are thousands of SMBs, tho, and many of them dont need more horsepower than google apps currently offers.
nice work getting that deal done.
capgem’s working this in europe.
in europe, there is no sarbOx.
there are thousands of SMBs, tho, and many of them dont need more horsepower than google apps currently offer.
nice work getting that deal done.
googleapps are a nice idea, its needed often, but a killer ?? Not really.
Besides Sarbox - you could easily put the stuff on an internal server - the Q remains, how to address company internal compliance, confidentiality, privacy issues. Answers still open, because outside google’s business understanding. Right tool, wrong company.
Eric Schmidt!, hand the stuff over to ME to further develop it and we share the licencing fees, OK ?
To my knowledge, nothing in Sarbanes-Oxley forbids public companies from storing their documents on servers they don’t own. Can you substantiate this comment, Michael?