Today I read an article about, the originally French constultancy company, Capgemini partnering with Google to support Google’s Apps Premier. Capgemini will provide training, support, integration, and other services to large organizations that implement Google Apps Premier.
Appearantly this fact made a lot of rumours run in IT land. Specially a lot about the possible down fall of MS Office. Some people have already called Google Apps Premier the Office-killer. Which is to my humble opinion, a bit quick, not realistic and not objective at all.
Off course there are a lot of positive point that can be noticed about online based solutions :
+ Hardware cost reducing
As the online application is hosted on third party severs, the company does not have to invest in expensive servers to host databases and mainframes. Also the desktop pc’s used by the users of the application don’t have to be as powerfull as they are mearly terminals. The users pc is not running the application.
+ Administration time reducting
Online applications don’t have to be installed onto each and every user pc, the user pc’s don’t have to be maintenanced as much and the server does not need any hardware maintenance.
+ Cheap and easy collaboration and data sharing
Online platforms create and solution for data sharing and collaboration as everybody is working on the same server or server group and is working on the same platform. A much cheaper solution that similar offline products like MS Sharepoint server or MS BizTalk server but these solutions are much more extended than any available online app.
Microsoft is working on selling products like Sharepoint server as a service, reducing cost by not charging the full price to buy such a platform. This way it becomes more available to smaller companies. I for example, have worked together with a Belgian hosting company to set up some pilots of MS Sharepoint server as SaaS.
But there are also some important disadvantages about online applications :
- Security
One very important one is security. If you are using online applications, all data (confidential or not) is being send trough internet. Outside the save boundaries of the companies firewall. Not only this, the data is also hosted on a third party company. Confidential data sold to the highest bidder ?
-Downtime
You can make your servers and network as good as you want, something will always go down. Something that goes up must come down. Even IT can’t escape the rules of gravity. What happens if your entire company relies on an online platform and internet, network or power goes down ? Technically unemployed. Sure, if you rely on an offline server, hosted in your own network and network or power goes down you have the same result. But throwing internet into the equasion makes it much more unrelaiable.
Microsoft responded to the rumours about a possible Office-killer with the fact that the current amount of users of online based solutions is very vague. No independent studies have been made.
They also point out to the fact that there is no real ‘roadmap’ of Google’s online application adventure. The future of Google Apps Premier is again very vague and can Google provide continuity ? Or is Google Apps Premier just one of their side projects next to the search engine ?
MS also point to the possible fact that just having an online based platform is not enough to run an entire company, you need an offline platform as wel. So if you can do it with just an offline solution alone, why would you invest in both ? Just to get that extra flexiblility ?
For the moment, it looks like MS is going for the best of both worlds in one solutions, working together, extending each other. A bit like they are doing with Exchange server. If you run an Exchange server, you can provide an Oulook Web Acces (owa), so users can check a light version of Outlook online that is synchronised with their data on the Exchange server. But then, the service would be hosted by Microsoft.
A 55-page report from Creese, where they microscopically investigated the pro’s and contra’s of Google Apps Premier, conculded that SaaS is strong in certain areas and weak in others. For example, Creese found the suite lacking in archiving features, such as records management and electronic discovery, as well as in analytics capabilities, such as analysis of content creation patterns.
Google responded with a statement saying that the suite gives organizations “a new set of choices, many of which will complement and extend the power of the desktop, enhance group productivity and improve collaboration.”
Conclusion
So what you realy can conclude is that online and offline applications work best as extentians of each other. Possibly the path that Microsoft will try to follow. So only time will tell, but the technology is still to young to speak of an Office-killer. And Microsoft will also adapt their products to the futur needs, don’t forget that MS has been talking a long time about online solutions (Windows Live) and even go much further, MS even thinks about online operating systems.
So Google Apps Premier will be a push in the back for Microsoft to put pace in the development of the Windows Live product line.
I wonder…
Greets.
