Postini: Will Google REALLY Mean Enterprise Apps Business?
Google Enterprise touts its Google Apps product IS meant for business, hailing three Postini product enhancements: Message filtering, security and discovery.
Managing email systems has never been easy, and for many businesses it only seems to be getting harder: Not only do you have to worry about increasingly complex email security threats, upgrades and patches, but archiving and e-discovery needs to meet regulatory requirements are also on the rise. We believe cloud computing can dramatically simplify this problem for our customers and reduce costs, and today we’re taking another step to make it so.
BUT, will Google take a really big step to make its really big enterprise ambitions ”so”?
In There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway I analyze how Google is making NO serious Google Apps PAID headway.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt conveniently forgot his suppposed new motto last week in his 2007 Q4 report to Wall Street, “Search, Ads and Apps”: Wall Street is apparently forgetting it too! GOOG continues to be stubbornly 99% AdWords and AdSense pure (SEE Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises) and the Googler in Chief underscored the GOOG magic is NOT highly diversified:
Where we see big opportunities and our primary focus on investments is in fact in our core business, and you see the success we had in 2007 and in Q4, the vast majority of that was actually not in all the things that generates all the exciting new announcements that we are happy to talk about, but in investments in core search and core advertising globally, which I’m incredibly proud of.
Schmidt was NOT particularly proud to dwell on Google Apps’ track record. When asked by an analyst, “Should we assume that most of the growth in licensing was due to the Postini acquisition in the quarter?” Schmidt cut off his products point man:
JONATHAN ROSENBERG: I think we’ve had a lot of success to date with small businesses. We added a lot of ISPs, which tend to drive a lot of the traffic. We also pushed a lot of the education efforts, which I think had a pretty significant component. Beyond that, it’s hard to –
SCHNMIDT: The answer to your question is yes. It’s easier that way. Why don’t we go to our next question?
The BIG question for Google Enterprise is can it REALLY mean Apps Business: WILL GOOGLE EVER STEP UP TO THE DIRECT ENTERPRISE SALES PLATE IN A MEANINGFUL WAY? Google extols the self-serve and reseller sales models because they cost the least for Google. You get what you DON’T pay for though.
Google’s steady stream of incremental product upgrades do not sell themselves to businesses. Google bought Postini with the aim of being a serious enterprise player. The Google Apps pitch is not an easy sell, but if the Postini add-on is as powerful as Google hails, Mountain View ought to invest more heavily in direct sales along with product development.
MORE: Google Apps Meets Les Miserables: Enterprise IT Team DREAMS Big
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