Mary Jo Foley at ZDnet writes an article with ten questions from Microsoft [1] to ask (and answer) before deciding to switch to Google Apps [2] rather than Microsoft Office in an enterprise environment. Google Docs and Spreadsheets in it’s Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) [3] edition is being targeted at enterprises, and, due to the cost, churches and non-profits. Non-profits even enjoy a lot of free benefits from Google although I don’t have a full comparison handy. I think these questions are worth asking, because many I don’t have answers for. I keep being tempted to take a look at Google for more than just hosting personal email (even using my own domain), but I’m not convinced that for business use they are appropriate in more than a few cases right now, especially the apps. I actually have one “business” domain that I am going to convert to Google Apps email but I have very specific reasons, and it’s not the whole company! But this post is more about the Docs and Spreadsheets aspect of their offering, which I have even more reservations about. Here’s a taste:
9. Google says that enterprise customers use only 10% of the features in today’s productivity applications which implies that EVERYONE needs the SAME 10% of the feature when in fact it is very clear that in each company there are specific roles people play that demands access to specific information – how does Google’s generic strategy address role specific needs?
Thanks to Vladville [4] for the post with the original link.