Google in the enterprise part deux
I found this article that Google is planning on charging enterprises for their newly-acquired/built webapps like Google Docs.
I thought this sort-of announcement was pretty poor timing as many are starting to wonder if Google can get anything right besides search. Witness:
Blogger was down for an extended period of time last Wednesday.
Their Groups product has poor performance and almost daily glitches.
Their Gmail periodically seems to drop messages (or possibly munches them in the spam filter). And other people experience rather frequent Gmail outages.
Now their Finance product is also crashing
They lure you in with the sexy front-end and then they disappoint you with terrible reliability. The ever-present “beta” label may work in consumer web, but that’s not going to fly as an excuse in the enterprise.
This stuff is free to me, so I suppose free is as free does and I put up with the erratic performance. But if you start charging customers money they’re going to start, like, expecting things from you. They’ll want you to do really unusual things like fix a bug, keep a system running or stick to a deadline. Given what a drop in the bucket Google Enterprise revenues are for the overall business, I'm skeptical that the tail's going to have permission to wag the dog.
[Google]
posted by Charles @ 11:05 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
hmmm......what SLAs are SAP customers getting from their IT shops and outsourcers? How big are their maintenance down time windows?
How buggy is current enterprise software?
And how much do current enterprise apps cost compared to Google offerings?
By my calculations, Google has long to screw up before it can match current delivery standards...if it does, that would be a sad day for the industry.
"what SLAs are SAP customers getting from their IT shops and outsourcers?"
1. I have no idea, I don't work for an outsourcer.
2. At least they're getting SLA's and there's some explicit accountability. Do you thing Google will do the same?
"And how much do current enterprise apps cost compared to Google offerings?"
They do completely different things. What's your point?
"How buggy is current enterprise software?"
All software has bugs. But enterprise apps typically dont have the kind of bugs that render a system unusable for hours on end. In a mission-critical environment, this level of downtime can cause an earnings miss.
"By my calculations, Google has long to screw up before it can match current delivery standards"
Please show me your calculations.
My friend you do work for an outsourcer. The day SAP started offering SaaS, it became one, and like salesforce.com you will have to showcase uptime, response time etc. Specific to Google, for the last 4 years I have accessed the search engine at least once a day - many times outside the US and on just about every hour of the day, and never found it down. Try getting a price for that uptime SLA from EDS or IBM. Not sure what their apps up time is, but they have set themselves a bar.
On bugs, the reason why enterperise apps work is because corporations test the darn things to death - testing is often 30 to 50% of an implementation. Multiply all your customers times testing effort, and it is not trivial. BTW - they would similarly do that with Google if they adopted its apps.
On Calculations - see some here
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2006/11/sacs_software_a.html
"My friend you do work for an outsourcer. The day SAP started offering SaaS, it became one, and like salesforce.com you will have to showcase uptime"
Fair enough, this has occurred to me after I write. But you can't criticize SAP for SLA's, the SaaS business has just begun. Ask me again in a year. If SAP has weak SLA's you can take me to task.
"On bugs, the reason why enterperise apps work is because corporations test the darn things to death - testing is often 30 to 50% of an implementation. Multiply all your customers times testing effort, and it is not trivial. BTW - they would similarly do that with Google if they adopted its apps."
Well yes and no. Yes, customer testing is a big part of TCO. Software companies need to do more on this.
But no, Google is not the same thing. If Google issues an app and a customer tests and finds a sev 1 bug, do you think they're going to commit to a resolution rate? For David Girouard's piddling little division? I seriously doubt it. The rate at which things crash or flake out (note Google Calendars today) tells me this is not as high a priority for Google as it is in the enterprise.
Charles, all I am pointing out is from a cost and high availability perspective Google has raised expectations. You can take shots at them and keep making case your stuff solves more complex problems or accept that is new reality. Do corporations expect free - no, but they sure are asking how Google can do things that Microsoft, Oracle, Accnture keep telling us are not possible. It is starting with the SMB market and slowly creeping up.
Google should be looking at a totally different market, not the Fortune 10000 or the professionals in developed nations. Millions of small businesses and billions of customers in the developing world. For these new customers reliability is not important (yet) but price is. Oracle, SAP or microsoft can put its software on the web for free but the costs of operating them - IT support, servers, user training, configuration, testing etc etc would far far exceed the $3/month or so google is proposing. It is all good that one can file quality cases with Oracle, but end of the day they don't have money to spend. Reliability and dedicated support comes at a price. I don't see how Microsoft, Oracle or whoever can offer software at $3/month without working out a version of the google model (SaaS, minimal customization and support, standardization, scale etc.).
Didn't we all put up with PC word processors crashing all the time -- saving data on floppies, taking backups on paper etc. Why would we put up that? because, the alternative was to spend $15,000 on a Wang word processor. PC's eventually became stable.
I hope google doesn't get caught up in the enterprise apps software model - dedicated service, support, defect tracking, high SLAs etc. That would be suicidal. Instead it should should focus on copying as many features as it can, avoid customizations, standardize, scale and drive the price down to a very very low level. The cash flow from these 'low end' operations would enable quality to eventually improve and take over the mid and high ends. We can see Salesforce.com's Oracle DNA taking over and they are taking about customizations, SLA's etc. Along with some crazy pricing schemes. This lack of focus - trying to play all over the place - cant' be good.
Vinnie,
I just can't believe you think Google raised the bar for availability. There isn't a single app I use at work, desktop or enterprise, that crashes as much as Google does.
Naveen,
I think you are spot on. Both on Google and on Salesforce.
May be you should find offline opportunity to earn your money, for example franchise pet business or coffee business. I think that this is great opportunity!
^^Thanks!!
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