Can CapGemini Really Make Google Matter in the Enterprise?
Nick “Does IT Matter” Carr cites a CapGemini spokesperson on why Google Apps matters in the enterprise, especially the enterprises CapGemini seeks to do business with.
Steve Jones may be a CapGemini “outsourcing exec who oversees the firm’s work with SaaS,” but his pitch for Google Apps is primarlily a Googley one, as presented by Carr:
Google’s package offers two immediate advantages. First, it allows the many thousands of workers who don’t have their own PCs or their own copies of Office - from factory hands to call-center agents - to gain access to email, calendars, and other personal-productivity applications. Up to now, licensing and data-storage costs have prohibited these “disenfranchised employees” from being given access to Office-style apps. Because Google charges only $50 a year per user for Apps and stores all email messages and other data in its own systems, it lowers the cost barrier substantially.
Second, Google Apps simplifies collaboration, particularly between employees working at different companies. With Office and other traditional apps, such collaboration usually entails “lobbing emails over the firewall” with attached files. Such “paper-shuffling” leads to a proliferation of different versions of documents, adding complexity and delays to the process. With Apps, a single version of a document is maintained by Google, and people from different companies can work on it simultaneously. That, can greatly speed up the work of inter-company teams.
Jones has apparently been brushing up on the Google Apps enterprise sales pitch:
EMAIL AND CALENDAR FOR DESKLESS WORKERS
Enterprises in industries like services, hospitality, manufacturing and retail have traditionally been unable to provide all their employees with the most basic messaging and calendaring tools that employees at headquarters take for granted.
Analysts estimate that up to 45% of employees do not have a company-provided email address. While some of the benefits of providing company-wide email might be obvious (like reduced paperwork and improved communications), other benefits of providing email to every single employee include improved employee morale, and reduction of the digital divide that for years has separated office workers from deskless employees.
ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION WITH GOOGLE DOCS AND SPREADHSEETS
Web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that makes collaboration more efficient. It lets you keep a document online that others in your organization can edit and update simultaneously right from their browsers, so you don’t need to keep track of attachments and who has the latest version of a file. Multiple people can make changes at once, and see other people’s edits as they happen in real-time. And each revision is automatically saved for you, so you can see who changed what, when, and revert to an older version at any point.
It’s easy to get files into and out of Docs & Spreadsheets. To start from an existing file saved on your computer, simply upload the document and pick up where you left off. To work on documents offline or distribute them as attachments, simply save a copy of a Docs & Spreadsheets file to your computer in the format that works best for you.
YAY! For Google Apps in the enterprise? NO! CapGemini has yet to produce an in-house Google Apps testimonial!
Google Apps is now one year old, Google Enterprise Search, however, is a Googleplex “old timer.” Nevertheless, GOOG continues to be 99% AdWords pure!
No matter how much Google wants it, betting on a a Googley consumerization of the enterprise is not a winning hand, as I discuss in Office 2.0: Zoho Business and Google Apps FAIL to Dazzle
ALSO: Microsoft Works 9 Frenzy Overblown: What ‘Free, Ad Supported’ Really Means
and Google Apps Packs It Up: StarOffice On Microsoft Desktop Rules
and Hey Google: When Can Matt Cutts Ditch Microsoft PowerPoint?
and OpenProj Unleashed: Projity SaaS Microsoft Office Project ‘Direct Hit’