Tag Archives: microsoft

Google Apps: Should You Switch?

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I love Google! I admit I am a sucker for Google news, and the latest Google tip I learned about has got me as excited as any other one they’ve put out: Google Apps.

Google Apps comes in four flavors: Families & Groups (free, with 2GB of e-mail storage per account), Small Businesses, Enterprises and Schools (these three, at $50 / user account / year, with a free trial until April 30, 2007). The offering consists of web-based products we are already familiar with to a certain degree: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Page Creator and, for users other than Families & Groups, Extensibility APIs.

They have a whole section with customer testimonials, where companies such as Procter & Gamble and GE are featured. In academia, Arizona State University is the biggest school to have adopted their platform. Here’s the intro to a case study about the rollout of Google Apps in ASU:

Oct. 10, 2006 Arizona State University (ASU) makes Google Apps Education Edition available to 65,000 students. ASU configured and deployed Google Apps for Education, Google’s hosted email, IM and calendaring solution, in under two weeks, including integrating it with home-grown single sign-on and user provisioning systems.

This Wired article lays out very well the pros and cons of the Google offering. Still, over time, I feel this is the direction most software will go into. The concerns over offline access and weirdness of working on the web will subside as high-speed internet connectivity becomes even more of a commodity and web-based everything becomes the norm.

As for privacy concerns, extremely confidential matters may still need to reside in local computers, but how many companies are in that situation? And even if all companies were there, there’s millions and millions of users who are not bound by privacy requirements imposed by investors, customers or regulatory agencies.

So, in my opinion, this step by Google is a solid one taken in the right direction. As for Redmond, I think the Office team at Microsoft should be very concerned.

Something Is Changing Back in Redmond

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Yesterday we had our best day yet at the Web Design World 2006 conference here in Boston.

The day started with a very good keynote by the Product Manager from Microsoft that is responsible for upholding the side of the developers for Internet Explorer. Pete LePage spoke at length about the new product and how it’s always walking a fine line between standards compliance and “not breaking the Internet”. As shocking as this last comment may sound, it is indeed very true, in a world where still well over 85% of the (PC) users use IE and where millions of web sites are “hacked” to work with older browser versions they want to support.

Two very interesting things I took away from his presentation:
1) The availability of IE VPC, i.e. a VPC Hard Disk Image for testing websites on IE6 SP2, while you have IE 7 installed. This was not just fascinating to hear about (you HAVE to be doing it, obviously) but also comforting.

2) Pete confirmed to me the perception that something may indeed be changing in Redmond. I started having this impression back when I read the Wired article that spoke about the paradigm changes Ray Ozzie was introducing in Microsoft. Pete was humble to admit his company’s mistakes from the past and confident enough to know IE still holds a solid lead in the browser market, but at the same time, respectful when making remarks about his competitors and Microsoft’s ability to be all things to all people. 100 points for PEte, for this!