Channel Pro - June 2007

QUICKHITS
Google Eyes Microsoft’s Turf

PEOPLE LOVE FREE STUFF. And, if the free stuff is really cool, they will continue to want it even after a price tag has been added. After all, Napster may have ignited the music download craze, but Apple dented the CD industry by selling MP3s legally.

So how does one company gain market share over another that maintains a stranglehold on a particular service? Start with some free stuff, make sure it resonates with people, then enhance that stuff and offer it at a price. Oh, and have a brand name that’s as recognizable as the company you’re challenging.

PC giant Microsoft, meet Internet behemoth Google, which has recently introduced its Google Apps Premier at $50 per user account per year as an upgrade option to those already familiar with its free Google Apps bundle.

Right now, Google Apps as a Microsoft Office killer is akin to, say, Microsoft’s Zune as an Apple iPod killer. But with the respect and confidence of analysts, support of increasingly Web-

lished email, calendar, and Web-page creation services, Google is at least rotating the wheel.

“Whenever there is a status quo, to change something very entrenched like Office, you’ve got to be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” says McCabe.

SMBs are just beginning to realize that productivity software is available over the Internet, according to McCabe, so many companies will simply stick with what they know. Others, she says, may feel more com-

fortable with an apps suite that does not require that they maintain an online connection or raise compatibility and security concerns about Web-based data.

On the flip side, SMBs that think the cost and installation of Office upgrades is a hassle, like the flexibility that mobile work access provides, and have spent the last decade-plus growing up in an Internet-dominated world, may gravitate toward Google. “My guess is that smaller, newer companies with younger decision makers are going to

OBIT

Introduced: Mid-1980s Died: Early 2000s

Right now, Google Apps as a Microsoft Office killer is akin to, say, Microsoft’s Zune as an Apple iPod killer.

savvy SMB principals, and a larger-than-life brand name, Google seems poised to become a real thorn in Microsoft’s side.

“All of the numbers we see indicate that 85 to 87 percent of all SMBs are using some version of Office, so it has pretty much become the de facto standard,” says Laurie McCabe, vice president of SMB insights and solutions at New York-based analyst firm AMI-Partners Inc. “Five years from now, I think it will drop. We’re having a shift in generation as baby boomers retire. And as people start up new businesses, a lot of times they’re looking for a cheap and easy way to do things. I think Microsoft could lose at least 15 points.”

Google is not reinventing Microsoft’s wheel; instead, by making documents and spreadsheets Internet based and adding them to firmly estab-

be more open-minded when it comes to [choosing a Web-based productivity suite],” McCabe says.

Clearly, Microsoft has received the message that more companies are thinking outside the desktop. Last year it launched Office Live to include Web page design tools, free domain name and Web hosting, Internet storage space, and company-branded email accounts. The product is even offered in Basics (free), Essentials ($20 per month), and Premium ($40 per month) levels to appeal to a range of SMBs.

Google might not have the cachet of Microsoft in this arena, but its free Apps offers as much email storage at 2 GB, for example, as the top tier of Office Live. So who’s competing with whom?

TTODAY WE MOURN THE LOSS of Original NetWare, the hard-working but quiet network pioneer who finally died of the fatal combination of neglect, being outside the mainstream, and decades of marketing mistakes.

Once winning awards as the most secure and highest performing worker in computerdom, Original NetWare dominated in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming invisible in the market and in the companies he serviced. In one famous incident, workers bricked up the room where Original Net Ware sat, and he continued working for months.

Steadfastly maintaining that security and performance counted more than marketing flash, Original NetWare kept a series of baskets over his public light. Seizing the opportunity to weaken Original Net Ware on marketing grounds rather than performance and security, his enemies turned the public against him.

In the last several years, members of the German side of the family began calling themselves NetWare, and Original quietly kept working and didn’t object. The blended family now tries to confuse friends of Original NetWare by claiming to be the real NetWare, but true friends fondly remember Original Net Ware, and promise to go on a snipe hunt in his honor.