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A brief critique of Burton Groups “Google Apps in the Enterprise”

Let me start by saying that the responsible position for author Guy Creese to take would have been much closer to LimitNone’s white paper entitled “Google and Microsoft: Living together in harmony”, because most organizations have a lot to gain by mixing the two environments. But that would not have garnered nearly the same amount of attention as pitting Microsoft against Google and taking every opportunity to point out why a Google solution could be a “career-limiting” move.

The real differences between Microsoft Office and Google Apps is best shown in this graphic. And this is what Mr. Creese fails to recognize - Google Apps is a very different beast than Microsoft Office and addresses a very different need. Comparing the two as though one was a replacement for the other is completely meaningless.

There are a couple of minor errors in the report:

• He states that “It is worth noting that developers cannot programmatically create a new spreadsheet.” We do this quite easily in gSHARE for Excel.
• He refers to “Google Works”, by which I assume he means “Google Gears“.

There are also some odd comments, like:

• Not having an offline capability may “marginalize employees who do not have a connection at home”. Which century are we in? My 85 year-old mother-in-law has an internet connection at home.
• It is “Difficult to Plan for Product Capabilities and Rollouts”. This is true if you roll out a new version every 4-5 years (think MS Office). But incremental changes to this type of software is hardly an issue. We are not talking mission-critical software here.

All in all, I think this could have been a very useful document for anyone considering Google Apps, if only the title (and gist) had been: “How Enterprise Architects can leverage Google Apps in the Enterprise and thereby boost their careers.”

Burton Group makes fools of themselves

When I saw this article on a new report on Google Apps by the Burton Group, I was reminded of the Robert Heinlein quote:

“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.”

So I started to write about this, then came across a great response by Miguel Pires in CIO, so I’ll just quote him. Here is what he said:

If I had any doubts that Google Apps poses a serious threat to the software business, they have been dissipated after reading the following article from TechWorld: “Deploy Google Apps, get fired”Here is the link:

http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?newsid=9877

In short, the author talks about a report from the Burton Group which describes why the set of applications (and associated hosting services) provided by Google just don’t cut it for large-entreprise use although for SMB and even universities its use is, however, seen as appropriate.

Although this is debatable and I am sure many would take a stab at debunking the argument exposed, I don’t find it particularly surprising and so should no one.

What this article does (although it does not recognize it) is merely to expose Google Apps for what it is: a disruptive technology.

Disruptive technologies start out as really shabby versions of existing software applications (such as Office) which are laden with functionality that 80% of the users do not use such as:

- “Google Docs does not support a table of contents, headers, footers, automatic creation of footnotes or end notes.”

- “Google Spreadsheets does not support some of the more esoteric functions within formulas (eg, database functions), and cannot hide rows or columns.”

So what? It is not supposed to do that anyway…

Furthermore, what characterizes disruptive technologies is the fact that they appeal to the less demanding users that have been overshot by the overwhelming amount of functionality that they have to pay for with Microsoft Office - i.e. the schools, the universities and the home users

These are users that really don’t care about nifty functionalities that a minority uses and are not willing to pay for them.

The report ends by saying that although Microsoft and others will take a hit from this, in the end they will be just fine. This might be true in the short term - another characteristic of disruptive technologies is that the type of customers they attract are the low-margin customers for Microsoft. So, in the short term, Microsoft will actually see its margins improve due to the disappearance of this lousy customers from the customer mix, but as Google Apps improves and it will improve, then the business customers will start migrating to Google Apps AND THEN it will be too late for Microsoft - the floodgates will open…

For more information on how MS Office and Google Apps can live together in harmony, read our White Paper and take a look at our gSHARE products.