Google Apps and the Enterprise
Interesting review of Google's slow inroad into mainstream IT.
Key points:
- Gen Y isn't yet in charge of corporate IT decisions. Change is slooow.
- Google Apps is still a 'consumer' set of apps (e.g. lack of records management)
- Apps is basically a 'online' version of Office - not much differention (e.g. document suggestions etc) leveraged from online/collaborative nature of G Apps.
- It ain't 9x as good
A good, tight write up.
Didn't mention the desire for 'behind the firewall' implementation - I don't think Google offer anything (apart from the Search Appliance) as decoupled from their cloud...I think this has a big negative affect on take up (Gen Y perspectives or otherwise).
Of course, these are fixable issues...and there's a risk of bundling every G App in the same boat; I wonder if gmail use is far more prevalent than is being discussed here?
And then there's the hidden innovation going on in companies with page (vs. document) creation in tools like Wikis...this activity is reducing Office document creation (although I've yet to see anyone ditching Office from the desktop because of Wikis. Yet).
Would be fascinating for IT desktops to actually monitor usage of apps in some way...
If I was a CIO, I'd want (anonymised) heatmaps of usage of various apps from desktop users...would help inform the next round of Office App purchasing.
