Google Apps: Too cheap to ignore?

I've had a few conversations with IT executives from Fortune 500 companies in the past several weeks, and I've been surprised by how often a new enterprise-software company kept getting mentioned. The company?

Google.

Google has the problem of putting finish on a lot of its products, leaving things in eternal beta, but the price point for Google Apps is forcing even the biggest of companies to seriously consider Google instead of a Microsoft Office 2007 upgrade. (Google Apps: It's not just small customers anymore.)

We may be getting to the point where Google's "cloud" allows them to provision users so much cheaper than any given enterprise can that it will become the provider of choice.

In the case of one large company, it suggested that it costs them $200/user/year to provision their users with the kind of functionality that Google can provide for $50/user/year. They just can't "compete" with that.

So they're considering Google Apps. Tie goes to the company with the most scale? And isn't it odd that Microsoft is no longer necessarily the vendor providing that scale?

[Indervinder]

I looked at Google apps and for anything but the simplest of documents, spreadsheets or presentations it is not usable.

In a large organization you could provide everyone with basic Google apps and then for those who need it provide MS Office. You run into compatibility issues though when trying to distribute an MS App to others in the organization.

You also run into compatibility issues for people outside of your company. How many companies have Google Apps? What do you send a company for review? What if they send you a Word document to mark up?

I'm not a Google or Microsoft supporter (or detractor). I use both companies products, MS Office, Gmail (at home). I've tried Star Office at home and while it provides a lot of functionality (for free) the $200 savings for the hassle just isn't worth it. You use these products every day for basic tasks, they have to work. Mucking around with compatibility issues, bugs, lack of that one important feature will eat up that $200 "saving" really fast.

Perhaps sometime in the future Google apps will make some inroads into corporations but I can't see anyone serious about using Google apps instead of MS Office. Choosing Google Apps would be like giving your employees computers with 386 processors and monochrome screens to save money.

[paul.saulnier]

You would send an exported document from Google Apps, and simply tell users to not use Microsoft's proprietary marking features. Honestly, it's not that big a deal.

[TxDot]

Sounds like you've been talking to managers who are thinking in terms of money saved this quarter/year. What they don't pay attention to the money lost due to the hit on productivity. This seems to be one more knee-jerk reaction by managers that are out of touch with reality. They are so far removed from the people in the trenches that they just don't get it any more.

[jgfuller]

I would agree. Google Docs and Spreadsheet are woefully lacking in their ability to provide even basic MS Offic functionality. Now, ThinkFree online seems to do Office functionality much better.