Google Apps: Discovering That Microsoft Owns the Desktop
Guy Creese of Burton Group, published a report on Google Apps last year. We can expect an updated perspective in several weeks ...
... I've been updating my Google Apps report (the updated version should be out in several weeks) and in the course of making the revisions, I began to notice a pattern: Google is discovering--and reacting to the fact--that Microsoft still pretty much owns the information worker desktop. ...
... In other words, Google Apps is morphing to become a backend service to Microsoft Office. (This doesn't mean that the Google Calendar and Gmail interfaces are going away, but rather that the Microsoft Office interfaces can take their place if an enterprise so desires.) ...
.... This product strategy shift means that Google Apps now has two marketing stories: (1) it's cheap on the backend and frontend or (2) it's cheap on the backend. Google started with #1 (instead of paying Microsoft Office and Exchange license fees, pay $50 per user per year) but is now recognizing that may be too big a cultural leap for large organizations. So now it's offering option #2: (instead of paying Exchange license fees, pay $50 per user per year). With #2, the Google mantra of "Use Google Apps because it has a great consumer-tested UI" goes away, but the "less in your face" strategy may be more to enterprises' liking. ...
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