

Is Google's Enterprise Software Too Cheap? - brlittle
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/is-googles-enterprise-software-too-cheap/index.html?ex=1361336400&en=bf01c40b766608ec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

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danteembermage
It seems like the major criticism leveled by the article is that Postini
customers want support and are willing to pay for it and google is not
offering support and not making them pay for it.

Seems like the perfect opportunity to sell Postini support now that they
aren't bundled anymore. Support isn't Google's core competency anyway, they're
probably leaving this to others on purpose.

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apathy
The real problem is inertia.

'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', remember? It'll take a generation to
get rid of the crap, but it will happen. The CIO at USC arranged a campus-wide
rollout; more will follow. Once students (who then enter the workforce and,
eventually, make decisions) decide that $free >> $discounted for Office, and
things like a proper mail merge/track changes/export to Word are implemented,
it's all over.

Things like Scribd and ever-improving ajax applications, along with hopefully
forthcoming solutions to permit web browsers to exploit multicore 'puter
power, should help a lot. It always blows me away when managers make excuses
for paying (out of habit) for features that their workers do not use. Free is
not always better, but all other things kept equal, free+no-local-maintenance
is very good for a company.

~~~
brlittle
The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service. Some
people (my employer) care about that, and some don't. I'm not saying it's
insurmountable. I'm just saying that the idea of a Boeing or a General Motors
converting to Gmail isn't going to come to fruition under the current model.

~~~
apathy
> The flaw I see in that argument is that you have no guarantee of service.

Oh god, not this shit again.

Look at any typical SLA and tell me you don't see a zillion loopholes for
lawyers to wriggle around. There's never any real guarantee of service unless
an ironclad SLA is hammered out, and I suspect that if Google gets traction
with Gmail for Domains, they'll do it.

When I was at Google (2003-2004) we had something like 10 seconds of user-
visible outage. That was before Gmail, but it was also with a staff of ~200
people and ~250K servers. I have every reason to believe that Google can still
stomp the shit out of all contenders on uptime; they just need some incentive
to do it for specific services.

(my $0.02 only; I don't work for Google anymore. In fact I doubt I could ever
go back; it would be too depressing to see what's become of the bullpen
atmosphere in ops. Even still -- Urs may be the best in the world at what he
does.)

~~~
brlittle
Perhaps, in your hurry to condemn, you have misinterpreted.

When I can walk out the back door and speak directly to the head of the
department in charge of our application programming team, or the guys running
the servers, and so on, then I feel pretty good about guaranteed uptime. More
importantly, I can blame someone when it fails.

Let's presume for a minute that my smallish enterprise was to move to Google
Apps, and for some reason completely beyond the control of my people (Google
failure, cable cut, whatever), the service goes out. Who do I blame?

You can call it "shit" if that makes you feel better about it. But it
certainly doesn't cut any ice for me to walk into the President's office and
say "But Google only had 10 seconds of outage in 2003-2004." I'm still fired.
Imagine how much worse it would be for someone in a large installation.

When I control the gear, I control what I can and can't accomplish. Unless you
can sell me on a serious guarantee of service and compelling
functionality...no thanks.

~~~
apathy
> When I control the gear,

Does Boeing outsource anything? Discuss.

Obviously if you can run everything in-house for cheaper than an organization
can do it elsewhere, you should. Large numbers of businesses are discovering
that's not the case, or their 10 seconds of downtime isn't actually
consequential. (If it is, then having an in-house base of expertise is
critical. But an SLA is not the same as an in-house ops department!)

------
redorb
"left partners reeling and searching for more channel-friendly vendors for
their customers’ e-mail security needs.”

doesn't channel-friendly just mean higher priced?

~~~
icky
Higher-priced _and_ more brittle (so they can sell more support contracts)!

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apathy
nb. The article covers Postini, which is like SpamAssassin/DSPAM (or Zimbra
for that matter), only it costs money. There are some details that I am
eliding, but fundamentally, that's what we're talking about.

Postini likely adds a great deal of value to Gmail by virtue of the vastly
larger corpus. If that means that Postini is no longer a viable product for
3rd-party deployment, tough shit for the 3rd parties.

What I don't understand is why a Postini user (eg.) wouldn't just switch to
Gmail for Domains and forward everything through an IMAP relay.

I originally replied (on autopilot) regarding the existing Google
Docs/Applications framework. If they don't merge the entire mess into a rollup
offering, I'm going to be flabbergasted.

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edw519
Remove the middle man and bring more value to your customers. What a concept.

~~~
ntoshev
Actually the problem is that Google's apps are self-service, and this is not
what enterprise customers are used to. Most startups discussed here don't have
the option to provide the non-scallable phone support either, so it is a very
relevant problem.

Hiring 1000 people in a support center in India is a very un-googly thing to
do, so I guess Google will keep the prices low and persist educating their
customers to be able to use the services themselves. Maybe someone can invent
a better way to do just that.

~~~
jcromartie
"Actually the problem is that Google's apps are self-service, and this is not
what enterprise customers are used to."

Having worked with numerous "enterprise" packages in various capacities, I can
assure you that most enterprise software vendors offer something that only
barely qualifies as "support" anyway. The difference is that Google isn't
lying about their level of support,

~~~
misterbwong
While I do agree that most enterprise software support offices are-let's be
honest-crap, that fact doesn't negate the enterprise's need for software
support. Companies desire that safety blanket and "having someone to blame"
even if they are lying to themselves.

A friend higher up than me in business once told me that large corporations
are in the business of managing risk. This is in stark contrast to a startup
founder's penchant for taking them.

