Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer
The real (not so) head scratcher is WHY doesn’t Google have ANY pricing power itself???
When Google turned on the Apps Premier for fee spigot June 1, I mused “so, will Google be busy ringing up $50 credit card charges for the hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? of prior “free-trial” users of its would be Microsoft Office killer?”
Five months later, the Google Apps for Enterprise “limited time,” “30 day free-trial” offer is going strong, and all Google indications indicate that even at the rock-bottom, Microsoft Office “killing” price of $50 per user, per year, Google software is a tough sell.
I had a first row Javits seat for the Google Enterprise Interop keynote yesterday in New York City in the morning and watched the Google Analyst Day presentations live via video from Mountain View in the afternoon.
Bottom Google Enterprise line? Despite CEO Eric Schmidt’s Wall Street hype of “Search, Ads and Apps,” GOOG is now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, 99% AdWords pure.
In Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes yesterday, I reported how Google exec Matthew Glotzbach touted everything Apple in his Google Enterprise keynote before the east coast IT community, much to the chagrin of Interop GM Lenny Heymann. Glotzbach offered not a Google Enterprise word on Postini, the supposed Google $625 million ticket to enterprise credibility, and had no inspiring enterprise case study of how Google Apps premier is enabling the touted Googley “consumerization of the enterprise.”
The Interop Google Enterprise show was a hodgepodge of generic Internet growth stats and trite “innovation” cliches, hailing Steve Jobs and Starbucks, but NOT Google! All Glotzbach could muster for the Google Enterprise case was an end of speech brief mention of an initial ”adopter” of Apps, the non-paying education version that is.
While Google CEO Eric Schmidt rose to his “Executive Panel” occasion by making a heartfelt case for a worldwide movement to embrace the new, much ballyhooed, cloud computing paradigm, such a transition will be a very longtime coming and will likely continue to be a free-to-the-user one, for Google.
Schmidt declined to respond to very speciifc questions regarding the actual take-up of the Google Apps Premiere product versus the no-fee verison, indicating Google ”doesn’t break it out that way.”
Google may not publicy release “sales” figures for Google Apps, but the public “testimonial” accolades it touts for Apps tend to be the same non-paying “customers” over and over, comprising university and small corporate trial installations. Addtionally, Google has long readilly acknowledged that Apps is more attractive for SMBs, rather than the enterprise.
I previewed Google at the Office 2.0 conference last month by analyzing Mountain View’s “Switch to Google Apps” campaign. SEE: Office 2.0 Enterprise Showdown: Zoho vs. Google Apps vs. Microsoft.
Why not switch to Google Apps, indeed? Schmidt let us in on Google Apps Premiere’s not so dirty little secrets yesterday. Impediments to enterprise adoption of Google Apps:
1) Prospective customers must first learn about the Google SaaS offering and then, 2) Companies must agree to convert operations over to Google Apps.
Schmidt indicated that while it is “easy for brand new entities to embrace Google Apps,” it is much harder for existing entities to make the “switch.” What office productivity application is Google NOT getting businesses to “switch” from? Market leader Microsoft Office.
Google nevertheless seems resigned to not be “killing” Microsoft.
Schmidt believes we are on the cusp of a Web-based computing revolution, which is happening gradually, much as mainstream PC adoption was a slow but steady progression.
What is Google pinning its Apps hopes on then? Building towards a future Googley SaaS cause. After all, the hundreds of thousands of non-paying, but purportedly happy, student users of Apps will soon be making enterprise IT decisions; In favor of Google, Schmidt hopes.
MORE: IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway
PLUS: Google NOT Hot For SILICON ALLEY Technology! and Microsoft Vista: Are 88 million Computers Really Doomed?