Google Apps, Premier Edition Report Out

My 55-page report on Google Apps, Premier Edition (Google Apps in the Enterprise: A Promotion-Enhancing or Career-Limiting Move for Enterprise Architects?) came out several days ago, and the press has decided it's a newsworthy story. (You can get a free copy of the report here.) Interestingly, I came out with an equally in-depth report on SharePoint 2007 in January and that didn't even elicit a yawn.

Articles about the Google Apps report include:

• Jon Brodkin, InfoWorld, "Google Apps no match for MS Office, report says"
• Rich Seeley, SearchWebServices.com, "Burton cautions architects on SaaS"

Blogs posts about it include:

• Mary Jo Foley, All About Microsoft, "A hasty move to Google Apps a ‘career-limiting move"
• Miguel Pires, CIO, "'Deploy Google Apps, get fired' article"
• John Soat, CIOs Uncensored, "Should CIOs Take Google Seriously?"
• TechDirt Blog, "Analyst: If You Want To Keep Your Job, Keep Using Microsoft Office"

Comments

[Peter de Haas]

Guy,

How do you view the editors, introduced by IBM in Lotus Notes 8 in this context ?
I would not say they are a direct comparison to Google Apps functionality, but they certainly lack the richness of Microsoft Office ...

[Guy Creese]

Peter,

I'n not quite sure what you mean by the editors. If you're referring to Connections and Quickr, I think they make an already well-developed collaboration application (Notes) better.

For example, with Connections you get profiles (none in Google Apps), communities (mmm, in a general sense in Google Apps, in that you have people working together on a document, but not to the same depth--Google Apps doesn't even admit workers have roles), blogs (Google Blogger, but that's not part of GAPE), Dogear (no tagging in GAPE), and activities (nothing comparable in GAPE).

In Quickr, you get content libraries, team places, connectors, templates, and personal edition. Other than personal edition (sort of), everything else is missing in GAPE.

In short, the current model for collaboration in GAPE is very shallow, compared to offerings from Microsoft (Groove, SharePoint), IBM (Notes), Oracle, and Salesforce.com (forthcoming, but not yet released). The Google view is sharing calendars and concurrently editing a document is collaboration. (The odd thing is Google bought JotSpot almost a year ago and has sat on it. If they integrated JotSpot with GAPE they'd start to have something.)

However, although I look at Connections and Quickr with favor, I think the market is going to see a shrinking Lotus Notes installed base. At this point, Notes customers are fed up with IBM's longterm neglect of the product line and are looking elsewhere--even though Notes 8.0 shows that IBM realized its error and thinks Notes is important again. At Burton Group, we get a pretty steady set of calls from clients looking to move from Notes to SharePoint. I have yet to hear of anyone moving in the other direction.

[Peter de Haas]

Guy,

I don't mean Quickr and Connections.

I mean the 'productivity editors' in Lotus NOtes 8 ..
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/lotus/pub/lotusweb/misc/IBM_productivity_tools_overview.pdf

I fully agree with you by the way on the deamnd for SharePOint vs Notes. I persoanlly see it at all out large enterprise clients, including the few that still use Lotus Notes Domino in The Netherlands ...