Is Google's Enterprise Software Too Cheap?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/is-googles-enterprise-software-too-cheap/index.html?ex=1361336400&en=bf01c40b766608ec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

by brlittle • 18 years ago

11 15 18 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

edw5193• 18 years ago

Remove the middle man and bring more value to your customers. What a concept.

ntoshev• 18 years ago

Actually the problem is that Google's apps are self-service, and this is not what enterprise customers are used to. Most startups discussed here don't have the option to provide the non-scallable phone support either, so it is a very relevant problem.

Hiring 1000 people in a support center in India is a very un-googly thing to do, so I guess Google will keep the prices low and persist educating their customers to be able to use the services themselves. Maybe someone can invent a better way to do just that.

edw5193• 18 years ago

"this is not what enterprise customers are used to"

Another excellent reason to adopt them.

"non-scallable phone support"

Here's how to provide the best scalable support: Make your apps easy to use and do exactly what their supposed to without bugs. No need for "support centers". Problem solved. Woo hoo!

jcromartie• 18 years ago

"Actually the problem is that Google's apps are self-service, and this is not what enterprise customers are used to."

Having worked with numerous "enterprise" packages in various capacities, I can assure you that most enterprise software vendors offer something that only barely qualifies as "support" anyway. The difference is that Google isn't lying about their level of support,

apathy4• 18 years ago

The real problem is inertia.

'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', remember? It'll take a generation to get rid of the crap, but it will happen. The CIO at USC arranged a campus-wide rollout; more will follow. Once students (who then enter the workforce and, eventually, make decisions) decide that $free >> $discounted for Office, and things like a proper mail merge/track changes/export to Word are implemented, it's all over.

Things like Scribd and ever-improving ajax applications, along with hopefully forthcoming solutions to permit web browsers to exploit multicore 'puter power, should help a lot. It always blows me away when managers make excuses for paying (out of habit) for features that their workers do not use. Free is not always better, but all other things kept equal, free+no-local-maintenance is very good for a company.

edw5193• 18 years ago

Exactly. In 5 to 10 years, enterprise apps as we know them today will be like VHS tapes.

The only people really complaining are the middlemen who add no value. Imagine that, technology that makes you add value or get out of the supply chain.

brlittle2• 18 years ago

The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service. Some people (my employer) care about that, and some don't. I'm not saying it's insurmountable. I'm just saying that the idea of a Boeing or a General Motors converting to Gmail isn't going to come to fruition under the current model.

apathy4• 18 years ago

> The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service.

Oh god, not this shit again.

Look at any typical SLA and tell me you don't see a zillion loopholes for lawyers to wriggle around. There's never any real guarantee of service unless an ironclad SLA is hammered out, and I suspect that if Google gets traction with Gmail for Domains, they'll do it.

When I was at Google (2003-2004) we had something like 10 seconds of user-visible outage. That was before Gmail, but it was also with a staff of ~200 people and ~250K servers. I have every reason to believe that Google can still stomp the shit out of all contenders on uptime; they just need some incentive to do it for specific services.

(my $0.02 only; I don't work for Google anymore. In fact I doubt I could ever go back; it would be too depressing to see what's become of the bullpen atmosphere in ops. Even still -- Urs may be the best in the world at what he does.)

apathy4• 18 years ago

nb. The article covers Postini, which is like SpamAssassin/DSPAM (or Zimbra for that matter), only it costs money. There are some details that I am eliding, but fundamentally, that's what we're talking about.

Postini likely adds a great deal of value to Gmail by virtue of the vastly larger corpus. If that means that Postini is no longer a viable product for 3rd-party deployment, tough shit for the 3rd parties.

What I don't understand is why a Postini user (eg.) wouldn't just switch to Gmail for Domains and forward everything through an IMAP relay.

I originally replied (on autopilot) regarding the existing Google Docs/Applications framework. If they don't merge the entire mess into a rollup offering, I'm going to be flabbergasted.

danteembermage• 18 years ago

It seems like the major criticism leveled by the article is that Postini customers want support and are willing to pay for it and google is not offering support and not making them pay for it.

Seems like the perfect opportunity to sell Postini support now that they aren't bundled anymore. Support isn't Google's core competency anyway, they're probably leaving this to others on purpose.

redorb• 18 years ago

"left partners reeling and searching for more channel-friendly vendors for their customers’ e-mail security needs.”

doesn't channel-friendly just mean higher priced?

icky• 18 years ago

Higher-priced and more brittle (so they can sell more support contracts)!

Is Google's Enterprise Software Too Cheap?

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