Article that's interesting both for the story of MS displacing Google and knocking the bloom off the vine there, but also because the reporter may perhaps not understand the market dynamics that are typically in play when competing with Redmond....
Word on the high-tech street is that Microsoft is giving Serena Software its Business Productivity Online Standard Suite for free for three years, is migrating the company over from Google Apps for free and is providing a great discount on the overall enterprise agreement. Did anyone ever think the world would see Microsoft giving away software for free? Of course not, and that's why the idea sounds a little suspect.Actually, from what I hear, this "free" offer comes all the time, where the CIO/CFO conveniently forget how much money they spend overall with Microsoft and how many years they are locked in to those agreements and how much value they've received for all that investment.
At any rate, Google seems to have fallen on its features, too:
"In my opinion, Google's contacts [functionality] is nonexistent," said Brister, who noted Serena went with Google because it was the only credible company offering cloud collaboration at the time. "It's also their lack of professional customer support. Enterprise counts for 2 to 3 percent of their business and I think they put 2 to 3 percent of their effort into it, whereas enterprise is Microsoft's wheelhouse."Link: eWeek: Google Apps Replaced by Microsoft for Immature Products, Service, Serena Says >
He also said users who forwarded an e-mail with an attachment while Gmail was offline would sometimes have that attachment stripped--without warning--when it arrived at its destination. Google's support team told Serena to disable the offline feature in Gmail, an untenable solution in Brister's opinion.
There were other issues, but Brister said on balance the rate of maturity slowed for Google Apps, whereas Microsoft picked up the pace with BPOS.
"Google just hasn't matured to the point that we would have expected by now, and frankly Microsoft is a way better fit for us," said Brister, who was actively testing Google Apps 18 months before deploying it to his company's 800 employees.
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Graham Dodge | 6/17/2010 3:21:51 PM
Giving software away for free is a weapon in every vendor's armory eg IBM/Lotus is giving Symphony away for free to *every* user of MS Office. Don't get me wrong here - I think Symphony is a great idea, but sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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Peter O’Kelly http://pbokelly.blogspot.com/ | 6/17/2010 6:44:19 PM
Hi Ed -- would you care to go on record and state that IBM doesn't occasionally engage in non-disclosure-agreement-based scorched-earth competitive pricing tactics? I have run into a few instances of that scenario over the last 18 months, FYI, e.g., an IBM proposal to apply mysterious "mainframe credits" that an IBM customer hadn't previously heard about, to pay for 40,000 seats of WebSphere Portal, in one competitive context. Perhaps you could explain why that sort of proposal is okay for IBM but apparently not for Microsoft.
In any case, it's good to see that we agree that Google is not ready to address real-world enterprise communication/collaboration requirements.
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David Bell | 6/17/2010 7:05:22 PM
@2 - MS gives things away for "free" because they know in the long term they reap far more from the ELA with other products and a laundry list of dependent infrastructure upgrades. IBM is not giving Symphony away expecting to recoup those costs elsewhere because we have no dependent licensing/upgrade requirement.
Come on over, we'll give you BPOS and the associated migration for "free"; we can conveniently forget that the AD upgrade alone to enable viability of BPOS will actually cost you $3m. That is a fact for one company.
@3 - I think there is a big difference between saying you're giving something away for "free" when you have no intention of doing so, versus telling a customer they don't have to pay more for something. In the former the customer still ends up paying, in the latter they don't.
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Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 6/18/2010 7:54:47 AM
@4 Completely agree, David
@2 More on @4
The common thread is free to get you to use it. But that's where it really ends.
X months or years free may appear free but it's the same thing as 1 free month at a rental. Get you hooked and who really wants to move, moving is expensive in itself. IBM, MS, VMware, <add whoever>, give you a discount is nice, but there's no guarantee that you won't be asked to pay full price next term.
There are different free models. Ubuntu is always free. It's Cannical support that costs money. Same with Lotus Symphony. It's completely free. If we weren't a Notes-shop, we could buy support from IBM separately.
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Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 6/18/2010 11:30:16 AM
@3, hum, so if Google is so far behind the times to address "real world collaboration" why would you honor them with hosting your blog?
I can hear it now, "Oh, but it is my personal blog"....bull. You know how bad your stuff really is that you don't use it yourself in public. Or did patch Tuesday take down your Sharepoint version?
It is people like you that really irk the crap out of me. "Lotus is crap, Google is crap, use my stuff. But please ignore the fact I don't use it....nothing to see here, move along".
See @3, the way I see you is as a "convenient evangelist". The technology equivalent of a mercenary, full of drivel for whoever will pay you to rant on. Interesting that on your (Google hosted) blog, the only post on the main page with comments is about Lotus Notes And I think you squarely lost that argument with Andrew Pollack. That is 42 blog postings, AND only 1 with any comments. I think "Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check" is a apt name. You need to get one.
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Peter O’Kelly http://pbokelly.blogspot.com | 6/18/2010 2:42:24 PM
@6 thx Ed. Let's hope there will be more transparency in this context in the future, to help customers make better-informed purchasing decisions.
@7 so you think I should have switched blog service providers, disrupting people who have been reading my blog for a decade, just because I went to work for Microsoft? I use a variety of products and services from multiple vendors, as I'm sure most IBM employees do as well. If you have more objective and constructive feedback than "people like you that really irk the crap out of me," I'd welcome your feedback.
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Lisa Duke http://www.simplified-tech.com | 6/21/2010 2:41:31 PM
@7, I am switching you to decaf. ;)
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Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com | 6/21/2010 8:41:28 PM
Surprisingly, Google's contact system is quite advanced and provides a lot of great things that Domino doesn't - out of the box.
I guess the deal with Domino is that if it doesn't quite do what you want, then you can build it. With Google, you take what you're given.
It's like comparing a slick looking toy car with a bumpy looking lego one. On the surface, one seems better until you start tinkering.
Now if you don't mind, I'm going back to play with my lego. :-)
When I was doing working for a Baltimore IT training company, Social Security Administration was one of our biggest customers. I taught many of their IT employees Lotus Notes and Visual Basic.
Later we were told that Microsoft gave them Exchange in a bid to get them to switch from Lotus Notes. I know they did switch -- but I'm cannot vouch as to the truth of the story we received.