The Problem With Google Business Applications…
I’m sure you seen that Google has just announced its $50 per user per year set of Google Office applications (you can read the story over at InformationWeek if not). For that, you get access to: e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, word processor and spreadsheet on-line applications.
It’s easy to understand why the Google management team would want to offer this - they want to kill one of Microsoft’s biggest cash cows. The problem is: as things stand today, this offering has absolutely no chance of generating significant revenues, or of stealing much business away from the market leader, Microsoft Office. That’s not because the Google applications aren’t good - they are. They even have the odd cool - if not unique - feature (which I’ve written about before).
So, why doesn’t Google Office stand a chance? Because, believe it or not - and technology experts seem to usually miss this point - most people don’t actually want to switch. People like Microsoft Office applications… Sure, MS Office is far from perfect, but taken as a whole, it is way superior to any other offering out there. I’m not saying that on-line office suites won’t be important - of course they will. But the devil is in the detail.
For businesses, spending money is not only about cost… it’s also about value. It doesn’t really matter if your office suite is free, $50, or $500. What counts is the value, and even more importantly - the perceived value (perceived by key decision-makers, that is). Can you do presentations using Google Office? No. Can you work on Google Office documents or access your old emails on the plane or train? No. The value in Google Office simply isn’t there.
And you’ll find many other problems too, when you dig into the detail of what’s really needed to switch a business away from Microsoft Office, without that business incurring significant problems. OpenOffice combined with Thunderbird & Sunbird, or Lightning, get much closer to a true low-cost-high-value alternative Office productivity suite. But even that causes big headaches for businesses.
The bottom line, however, is that it’s hard to get away from the fact that most people, in most companies, simply aren’t looking to switch away from Microsoft Office. Google Office, right now at least, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist…
Asam Bashir wrote:
What about all the companies Google is claiming to have made the switch. You’re right most aren’t looking to switch from Office, but they certainly want to switch from Windows and it’s ecosystem of techies..
It’ll be interesting to see how Google Office performs on the $100 laptop for the third world. I can imagine a lot of uses of the education package on that platform.
Posted 24 Feb 2007 at 3:14 pm ¶
simon wrote:
“All” the companes? Doesn’t look like that many to me. Microsoft Office has hundreds of millions of users…
As for “wanting to switch from Windows…” - is there any evidence for this? I’m not sure what you mean by the “ecosystem of techies”, but as far as I can see, hardly any people, in any companies, want to switch from Windows on the Desktop. They know Windows. They know how to be productive using it. Absolutely the last thing they want is to have their lives made more difficult while they’re forced to learn a new Desktop OS which, as far as they’re concerned, provides absolutely no net benefits to them over the old one (which, incidently, is also why no-one is rushing to upgrade from XP to Vista).
Of course, it’s quite common for the odd CIO/CTO to want to run a “let’s change our desktop OS” project. And they produce lots of bogus cost/benefit analyses to support their decisions to switch from Windows to Linux or Mac OS X on the desktop. In truth of course, these cost/benefit analyses rarely add up - it’s just that the CIO/CTO *wants* to do the switch. Lies, damned lies etc..
Posted 24 Feb 2007 at 4:48 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
“They know Windows. They Know how to be productive using it.”
Don’t you mean, they know how to use and be productive in Office? I’d be very suprised if more then 1 % of enterprise users actually know Windows. What they do know is how to get support from the techies to fix the problems.
Rather then your biased opinion, this seems a more balanced analysis,
http://www.cio.com/advice_opinion/infrastructure/operating_systems/halamka_os_review_print.html?return=1
Posted 26 Feb 2007 at 4:38 pm ¶
simon wrote:
You *should* be very surprised then
I’m not talking about Office, I’m talking about the Desktop OS.
Of course, different people have different levels of expertise. However, it’s things like: using Windows Explorer to find files; knowing how to find applications from the Start Button; knowing how to find file servers on the company LAN; how to set default preferences for various printers they use; how to “force-quit” an application that has hung; how to use keyboard short-cuts for cut and paste; using alt-tab to cycle through application windows; right-clicking for context menus; how to log onto the company VPN from home etc. etc. etc.
Almost all Enterprise users know how to do all these things in Windows (or the equivalent on Mac OS if they’re a Mac company). They have to learn different ways of doing those things if made to switch to a different Desktop OS… and people hate learning new things like that - it’s just a distraction from their work.
Now, “advanced” IT users say - “But these things are all trivial. You can learn them in a few hours, or a couple of days at most” However, this ignores that fact that 90% of employees in a company are not “advanced” users. It takes them a long time to get used to new things, and they can’t work things like this out for themselves.
My opinion isn’t particularly biased on this topic. What makes you think that?
It’s not even that controversial an opinion - “most people don’t like change”. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s take some quotes from the article you linked to:
“Few companies are seeking alternatives to the Microsoft desktop”
“People are risk averse. They don’t like to try new things.”
And from the conclusion:
“He (the CIO) he has no immediate plans to replace any Windows desktops with Macs”
How, then, is the analysis in the article more “balanced” than what I’m saying? It seems to be saying precisely the same thing…
Posted 26 Feb 2007 at 6:03 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
The link I gave was a summary, did you see the full article?
http://www.cio.com/advice_opinion/infrastructure/operating_systems/halamka_os_review_print.html?return=1
“Although he has no immediate plans to replace any Windows desktops with Macs, Halamka says he’s going to watch the price and performance of Apple’s newest OS, Leopard, which Apple is scheduled to release in spring 2007. If Leopard offers better administration tools than OS X and is more tightly integrated both with Outlook and with Microsoft’s Exchange server, Halamka would be more inclined to initiate the broader use of Macs. He would want such improvements to ensure that Leopard users won’t encounter as many of the problems he ran into accessing his Outlook calendar and delegation functions.
Halamka says testing alternatives to XP has been a valuable exercise because it made him realize that the Mac can be a viable computing platform for enterprise users.”
CTOs/CIOs need to look at alternatives to XP, and in that respect Leopard would represent an easier move then say Vista. If for example a sales team uses laptops out on the road, they would need the same amount of training to move to Vista as they would need to move to Mac OS X. A small amount of training is needed for any large scale deployment of new software so change is always happening.
Yes I totally agree with you that most people are resistant to change, but are you saying that staying on Windows involves no change? Of course it does, so it’s not a good argument to use against large scale deployment of Macs in certain departments and for certain tasks.
My advise to any large organisation would be that if the productivity of your particular team depends on Office, then a move to Mac OS X would be simpler and more cost efficient in the long run then a move to Vista. Once users get the basic hang of Finder and learn the shortcuts, the learning curve for Mac applications is far shorter then equivalent Windows ones. Mac OS X wouldn’t need to be locked down as much as an equivalent Windows system, and that little extra bit of freedom and creativity is sure to be a positive addition to any team.
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 3:17 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
http://www.cio.com/advice_opinion/infrastructure/operating_systems/halamka_os_review_17.html
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 3:25 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I understand that you see the coming migration of corporate desktops to Vista (which will be happening during the next three or four years) as an opportunity for Apple.
I just don’t see it though. I think there’s very little appetite for this. And, given that Apple has just changed its name from “Apple Computer Inc”, to “Apple Inc”, I’d guess that Steve Jobs agrees with me.
Their current focus on the consumer with iPods, iPhones, iMacs and Macbooks etc is going really well for them. If they crack the mobile phone thing, they’re gonna get even more successful than they are now (mobile phones much bigger business than MP3 players).
I don’t see why Apple would go after the corporate desktop anymore - it’s a pretty unattractive market for hardware vendors these days. What they’re currently doing for consumers seems to offer so much opportunity for growth, why wouldn’t they maintain focus on that?
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 4:05 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Why ignore an open door, a niche market of today won’t necessarliy exist in the future with product development. iPods and iPhones of today will be replaced by another gadget in less then five years…
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 9:22 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Yes, iPods are part of a small niche market that will probably be dead in five years. iPhones needn’t be. iPhone could be totally transforming for Apple.
As for why Apple should ignore that “open door” of getting Mac OS X on the corporate desktop, I think the answer is what’s known as “opportunity cost”…
This is a timely discussion… see:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/022707-mac-os-going-corporate.html?page=1
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 9:45 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
I don’t think it is an opportunity cost, Mac OS X is already developed, and ultra-sub MacBooks (12″, NAND flash only, hints of old PowerBook Duo) of the type Halamka wished for are also in the pipeline,
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1814
Maybe I’m not understanding the opportunity cost here, the nature of the products means they cross consumer and enterprise markets, does Apple have to do anything else specifically only for the corporate desktop market? If Google Office is successful at taking market share from Microsoft, then the web browser it needs to run does not have to be on a Windows platform….
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 12:14 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
The networkworld.com article suggests Intel could step in as a partner with an exisiting enterprise sales culture and organisation, I would suggest a better partner might actually be Google itself. Why does everyone forget Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors…
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 1:16 pm ¶
simon wrote:
The opportunity cost is that Apple doesn’t currently have the people, processes or even strategy in place that would let them move forward with an agressive “lets go after the corporate desktop plan”.
They do have an Enterprise team, but it isn’t up to the job of winning this battle. So, it would need more people, more money, and more management time etc.
And for what? Selling hardware for the corporate desktop is, on the whole, a low-margin business.
For example - IBM.. who obviously invented the business PC.. got out of the game because they couldn’t make any money out of it. That a Chinese company (Lenovo) bought the IBM PC business should tell you something about the margins here.
So, the opportunity cost is that if they deploy people and spend money, and use scarce management time to think about going after the corporate desktop… well these are all resources that aren’t being deployed going after high-margin opportunities.
Google Office apps are great - but they don’t meet the needs of the Enterprise. So, there is no way they can take market share from MS Office any time soon.
And, by the way, Google Office apps could cause some problems for people with Macs… for example, I believe the Google wordpressor and the Google spreadsheet don’t actually work on Safari. Yes, the Google CEO is on Apple’s Board, but that doesn’t mean Google has to focus on Apple all the time. The Genentech CEO is also on the Apple Board, but Genentech isn’t an exclusive Mac company. The Genentech CEO, as I understand it (I could be wrong here - it’s second-hand information), is pretty agnostic on the Apple/Windows debate as it applies to Genentech.
As for Google being a good partner for Enterprise sales… I don’t have any experience of Google’s Enterprise organisation. I’m actually speaking at a conference in a couple of weeks where the Head of Google’s European Enterprise stuff is also speaking. I’ll be interested to see what he has to say…
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 1:29 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
The Google apps are v 1.0, they’re sure to evolve as users give feedback. Schmidt has stated several times publicly his preference for Macs over Wintel machines, they’re working closely on iPhone, and there may be more close collaboration in the secret unannounced features of Leopard. Sure, the profit margins aren’t all that in the Enterprise market, but aquiring mind-share would be worth it, they can make profits from selling the backend servers and storage.
Apple users aren’t all die hard Safari users you know, we do install and use Firefox when needed.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 2:11 pm ¶
simon wrote:
“Apple users aren’t all die hard Safari users you know, we do install and use Firefox when needed.”
I’m am indeed shocked!
You’re saying that Apple users actually install third-party applications, even though Apple has already provided them with an app “out-of-the-box”?
Not on the iPhone they don’t
I’m sure Eric Schmidt does prefer Macs to Wintel. It would be kinda amazing if he didn’t… given that he’s worked at Novell, Sun, and now Google.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 2:58 pm ¶