CIOs Speak Out On Google Apps Vs. Microsoft OfficeCIOs Speak Out On Google Apps Vs. Microsoft Office

Google sees its Postini acquisition as helping to convince more CIOs to consider the company's Google Apps suite of productivity software. Yet providing companies with E-mail archiving and security is just a tiny step in the long haul Google faces to gain ground on Microsoft Office.

Joe Graves, CIO of Stratus Technologies, is among the doubters. Graves is a huge proponent of hosted software, using the offerings of Salesforce.com and others, and raves about the Google Enterprise Search box he's got plugged in. He's watched Google execs give presentations and calls Google "just a sharp company." But Stratus, a $200 million-a-year computer maker, has standardized on Microsoft Office and will likely stay that way.

"Google Apps would save us some money, but probably create some headaches that would surpass money savings," said Graves in an interview. "It's not clear with Google Apps that we'd have the same interoperability that we do with Microsoft Office." It's even the simple things, he said, like having someone from outside the company e-mail him a meeting invite that automatically pops up on his Microsoft calendar.

Besides, "I took a look at Google Apps and wasn't really impressed with it," Graves added. "It doesn't seem like a comprehensive package."

The $625 million Postini acquisition will help Google pursue businesses of "all sizes," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement Monday. But it won't be easy selling Google Apps to those with more than a few thousand employees. Google Apps cost just about $50 per person a year, but large corporations that buy in bulk from Microsoft are able to get Office for as little as $100 per license. Plus, moving thousands of people off of Microsoft Office to a new set of productivity tools also carries the challenges of training workers who may be resistant to change.

While Google Apps are meant to be simple, Microsoft has been moving in the other direction, adding more collaboration capabilities in Office and tighter links to its SharePoint server. That appeals to some large companies looking for more collaboration tools to improve communications among employees in far-flung regions.

There are situations where Google Apps makes sense for large companies, and Proctor & Gamble and General Electric are among those testing them. They're not the only ones. "We're talking to a major retailer," said Glen Stoffel, VP of business development at Bluewolf, a Google Apps implementation partner, in an interview. Bluewolf's unnamed prospect has about a thousand stores, each with about eight people using Microsoft Office. Yet they're probably using just a few things in the suite, which makes some 8,000 employees good candidates for Google Apps, Stoffel said. Compliance will be Google's biggest sales pitch with Postini. The company has been a partner of Google Apps for months, and among its offerings is Postini Compliance Services for Google Apps. This service lets someone track down a specific e-mail to "provide proof for a critical situation," and archive or block e-mail based on rules set by an administrator, "so users don't have to worry about complying with specific regulatory requirements -- it happens automatically for them," according to Postini's Web site.

Even before the Postini acquisition, Google won the interest of Ken Harris, CIO of nutrition company Shaklee. His IT department recently began testing Google Apps. "There's got to be a lot of CIOs doing the exact same thing as me," said Harris in an interview. "Google Apps has tremendous promise from my perspective. If the rubber meets the road, I could easily see us adopt this technology in the short/intermediate term. I think enough interest is brewing that I would be surprised if more companies at least didn't do an internal test in the not-to-distance future."

Harris likes that the service would be relatively inexpensive for the 1,000 employees likely to use it, and may also help him avoid a much-needed E-mail server upgrade. He's impressed that Gmail offers 10 Gbytes of hosted storage per desktop. "We have a number of internal users who are constantly demanding more capacity," he said. "I would love to get out from under that problem."

Shaklee has built apps that use Google technologies, like one that uses Google Maps to announce meetings and provide directions to its direct sales force. Google Apps also make sense for a company like Shaklee with a lot of mobile employees, since it doesn't require a "fat piece of software on a mobile device," he said.

Finally, Harris said he'd likely consider Google Apps over other low-cost hosted applications because of Google's viability and history of technology innovation. "They're not the kind of company that you have to worry about getting on their platform and falling into technology oblivion," Harris said. "They're going to be around, and add more and more features."

Yet, as the former CIO of Gap, Nike, and PepsiCo, Harris can see situations where the move away from Microsoft Office might be difficult. Big companies have built IT budgets around supporting Microsoft Office on the desktop, he said, and "making that change when you have 10,000 people versus 1,000 people is a whole world of difference."

There's no question, Harris added, that Microsoft apps have a lot more functionality. Nor can businesses ignore that most of the world's desktops run on Microsoft Office. "It's a lot easier to be sure you can 'talk' when using the exact same technology," he said. If two business partners are using Microsoft Office and one makes a change, Harris said, "suddenly you may no longer have that compatibility."