It’s been an big week for Google Apps, and in particularly for the Premier Edition (GAPE). Here’s a review, with links to the relevant posts from Read/Write Web.
- Sunday: “Google has partnered with major IT consultancy.. CapGemini, to sell Google Apps to enterprises… CapGemini currently manages about a million desktops for corporate clients.”
- Monday: An email from Microsoft stated 10 reasons enterprises should not use GAPE. “The 10 reasons… show just how concerned Microsoft really is about… Google Apps.” This despite CapG’s positioning of GAPE as a complement, rather than a substitute, to Microsoft Office.
- Tuesday: A web office startup reacted with what looks like alarm to the CapGAPE news. “Zimbra says that since all Google docs and files are stored on Google’s servers, public companies would face big Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues if they deployed Google Apps.”
- Nothing could be further from the truth! proclaims Bob Warfield. In other words, Zimbra’s SOX point may reflect alarmism as well as alarm.
- Another reason for hesitating about GAPE is that it currently relies on being connected to Google’s servers. But it’s hard to believe that this won’t be fixed very soon; I’m sure that Google has been working hard on making GAPE Gears-enabled, and hence available offline.
- Friday (yesterday, Sep 14): RWW joined other sources in expecting Google to announce “Presently,” Google Apps’ counterpart to PowerPoint, within the week. And “presentations is the only major app currently missing from Google Apps.”
The CapGemini deal, Presently, and Gears are a hop, skip and a jump taking GAPE closer to direct competition with Microsoft Office. I expect the skip (Presently) to be closely followed by the jump (Gears).
By the way, I don’t see my use of RWW as ripoff or laziness. Rather, I prefer to see it in trendier terms: RWW as platform, mashing the kiwi, something like that…
R/WW as platform — I like it! 🙂
But note we’re a very multicultural team now – kiwi, US, British, Turkish, etc 😉