Understanding What Google Apps Is (And Isn't)
The search giant says its Google Apps is a supplement, not a replacement, to Microsoft Office, aimed at helping users collaborate online. What remains to be seen is whether Google's efforts to strengthen the security of web-hosted Google Apps will win the confidence of nervous IT departments.
"It's around e-mail (and calendars) where you have co-existence issues with Google users and non Google users," he says. "With docs, it tends to no really be an issue because people are just using both [Google Apps and Office] and they use what makes sense for a particular task."
Secondly, Google isn't focused on the quantity of features it can embed into the product. Instead, it's focused on letting users collaborate online in real time. In other words, it doesn't matter to Google whether a person composes content in the Google Apps interface or Microsoft Word.
"Google Apps is used alongside other applications, and we believe that will increasingly be the case," says Girouard. "In the cloud-based model, there will be more vendor choice and mixing and matching rather than standardizing on a single vendor."
With respect to features, the people designing and managing Google Apps say they focus on getting each feature right for the user rather than packing in new, or half-baked, functions into the software for the sake of it.
"It's not about the application with 503 features beating the app with 502 features," says Rajen Sheth, product lead for Google Apps. "I think it's more about the app with 15 really solid, really useful features."
Consumer: Any person who has a Gmail account has access to the consumer version of Google Apps. This includes the key functions (Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Talk and Google Sites). Ads run along side many of the applications to subsidize the user's free experience. Each user gets 6.7 GB of storage.
Standard: This is utilized by many small and medium sized businesses and is also free (with ads). It has everything found in the consumer version, but it enables companies to use their own e-mail address (instead of @gmail) and has mobile access, an administrator control panel, e-mail migration tools, and online support.
Premier: For $50 per user per year, it includes 25 GB of storage per user and no ads. Aside from all the features of the standard version, it has e-mail security provided by Postini, and it comes with APIs that allow organizations to integrate Google Apps with enterprise single-sign on systems and e-mail. It also includes 24-hour phone support.
The Security and Compliance Question: Getting Comfortable with Google
Google's philosophy around information security is fairly simple: your data is safer with Google than it is with you.
"That's sort of bold and right in the face of what people object to with SaaS, but to be honest, that's the truth," Girouard says. "We've had intelligence agencies of the United States government tell us that: 'we think our data would be safer with Google than it is on our own servers.'"
