Since Gmail’s birth in 2004, Google has steadily built a powerful cloud-based email platform that’s chock full of innovative features including offline access, chat, search, mobile access and more. Google saw the opportunity to integrate Gmail and apps, like docs and calendar features, into the enterprise space and rolled out premier editions of Apps catering to the business community. Today, Google announced that it has struck a partnership with Valeo, an automotive components manufacturer, to deploy Google Apps on the company’s entire global workforce, which totals about 30,000 internet-using employees.
“The cost savings and innovation made possible by cloud computing help businesses better respond to a global and mobile workforce – especially in today’s difficult economic environment,” said Dave Girouard, President, Google Enterprise. “We’re thrilled Valeo has selected Google.
Google says more than a million businesses and ten million users are implementing the Google Apps suite currently but to date, the Valeo partnership is the largest single enterprise deployment. Genentech may be the second largest, with 20,000 users. Valeo is moving to the cloud with the support of technology consulting firm Capgemini.
When Google Apps first launched in 2006, it was free. Since then Google introduced a new model, where the free Google Apps account could be used by 50 users and the premier edition of the service, which as more storage and an uptime guarantee, costs $50 per user.
Google Apps is not directly competitive to MS Office (Google Apps is cloud based), but could be disruptive to Microsoft’s office suite, especially as Google continues to adds features to its own suite and builds on real-time collaborative features Office still doesn’t have.
MS Office: Profitable. Google Cloud: Laughable/
Profitable because of offline businesses who of which are a dying breed.
Google apps is a total end to end solution in the cloud. Office comes with the headaches/cost of IT departments.
get real pal. google apps is a pathetic business. good thing they have TechCrunch to write up their PR.
You’re a Microsoft Certified network administrator ain’t ya, admit it.
oh wow 30k, meanwhile ms office is used by 100 million others
sorry Leena, but 30K is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of MS Office users. In other news, these 30K users will still have MS Office installed on their machines for the times when Google Apps go down.
Eventually google will make everything in their app suite support offline mode.
50 million are cracked.
hah, ya probably
Wow are you on the Google payroll?
You’re mom is.
YOUR, andrew. YOUR. NOT You’re.
that said, the m$ tools are out in full force this week, aren’t they?
Your right :)
It looks like we already have a winner.
hope this pushes MS to build its office more into the cloud. but hey, did gmail force MS make hotmail better? -No, hotmail is simply dying, i try not to be skeptic but office may die soon too.
All but the Xbox is dead when it comes to MS
MS Office: 0? Are we sure about that?
Yes.
That’s 1.5 million US$/ year – a lot of money.
So they are uninstalling MS Office on all of thier machines? Yeah, I though not.
Yeah because they are switching to Ubuntu.
Scoreboard malfunction?
I’m the last person you’ll find using Microsoft products, but this headline is just ridiculous.
You’re a die hard MS fan wow.
Despite what MS fanboys might say Google is making real progress with APPS. A bad economy will only help even more.
I actually thought this was a good, short, informative article. Leena didn’t say this means that Google is killing Microsoft. In fact, she clearly states otherwise.
“Google Apps is not directly competitive to MS Office (Google Apps is cloud based)”
What this short article did tell me is that Google Apps as a whole is becoming more viable and a real choice for larger companies. That in turn tells me there is still great potential for market growth.
Google will kill Microsoft. Twitter will kill Google. BBC will kill Twitter. BBC will implode.
You mean, Implosion will kill BBC. :)
Doesn’t Microsoft’s Live@edu have about 3.5 million users in it’s program?
that would be, exchange/hotmail, online storage, office live, messenger, etc.
your scoreboard seems uninformed.
So does your cat.
can we block this trolling spammer?
When has an awesome sense of humour ever been interpreted as troll-like spamming behaviour?
Calling me a trolling spammer is like me calling you a censoring bully!
Who cares how many users Office has? Makes no difference to me – when I set up my company I deliberately didn’t use MS products and put everything in the cloud on google (and other, but mostly google) products.
Downtime experienced with google – none. Downtime I had experienced with Office – tons, but compared to none, even a few minutes is too much. And honestly what Office problem is ever fixed in a few minutes?
None.
@ryan-
I did exactly the same thing when I started my company, based on my horrid experiences with MS Office. In fact, we lead a Microsoft-free existence and have no downtime and don’t need an IT department. If that’s not progress what is?
Now while I don’t understand the whole Microsoft 0 Google 1 thing. I imagine it’s because Microsoft has yet to get cloud computing right as of yet. I see this as a huge milestone for Google though. Cloud computing is going to change many times over the next 10 years, but I see it being a big component of enterprises due to cost savings. MS Office = $240/seat. Google Office =$50/seat. Microsoft would have to drop prices to compete. That everyone could benefit from.
Claps.
Brutus, MS already did dropped prices.
In order to compare apple to apples:
MS Business Productivity Online Suite = $180/user/year vs Google Apps = $50/seat/year
MS Business Productivity Online Suite = B.P.O.S….Big – Piece – Of – S*&T. BPOS is a weak attempt to compete with Google Apps. Take a look at it, you’ll be disappointed.
What many of you Goggle naysayers fail to realize is that MS will likely lose hold of its monopoly over Office . I’m not saying its going to happen tomorrow, but I’m confident Office will not be as big as it is now in 10 years. Cost focused organizations like mine are frustrated with Office and we will likely make the switch within the year.
Office is already losing its monopoly – we won’t have to wait 10 yrs to see it. A large number of people have left Office bec of its bloat and viruses, for Linux, Mac, OpenOffice, smaller and leaner word processors and other apps … and Google’s apps.
Google (and other online apps) are clearly the office software of the next decade, and Microsoft has yet to really adapt, which is why it is already losing.
“chock full of innovative features including offline access, chat, search, mobile access”
Not a single one of these were innovative features when they appeared on Gmail.
It’s the way they were implemented that was innovative. Search in Gmail was better and faster than any other email program. Chat was easier and faster. Offline access meant you could use the best email program (Gmail) from any computer, without syncing, but still be able to use it when not connected to the internet.
Yup, things change. If Google keeps innovating like this, good things will and have happen for them. MS better step it up with Live.
From an enterprise-deal standpoint, 30k users is indeed not a big deal.
From a consumer cloud-based business moving into the enterprise space standpoint – it’s a very significant move.
So interesting to see how many Microsoft defenders there are out there.
First, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Microsoft launched Office over a decade ago and yes, has accumulated millions of users….based in part on lack of innovation from other software companies. Remember, Lotus? There were barely any competitors and Office became the standard.
Question for all the MS defenders now….how many of you are on the latest version of Office? Do you upgrade very release and/or pay for support? If your answer to the first part (version) is less than Office 2008 (or whatever it’s called), than you should not be allowed to talk…..instead, go out and spend $600 on the new version and buy a support plan.
Google Apps was released to businesses like a year ago and they already bagged a 20k deployment at Genentech and now 30k at Valeo? If you are MS, shake…just a little bit. Even though they only have 2 multi-thousand deployments (worth talking about), they are signing a million people a month.
Clu writes, >> So they are uninstalling MS Office on all of thier machines? Yeah, I though not.
You are right. They probably wont uninstall Office, but I can promise you that IT is working on future laptop images that do not include Office, nor will Valeo ever renew their site license with MS. Its not about removing old, obsolete software, its the fact that Valeo will NO LONGER be an Office customer. 30k users….thats a bit of revenue that MS counts on to keep their shareholders happy.
Secondly, how history repeats itself….Remember Siebel? Go ask them how much time and effort they put towards competing against salesforce.com back in ’99 and ’00. Do you think they were as nervous as MS may be at the market share of Google Apps? Probably not and look what happened.
When cloud services start nipping at the heals of large enterprise software companies and start gaining the trust and confidence of company’s CIOs (Merrill Lynch, Cisco, Dell, Starbucks, etc) the industry starts to shift. I think we all know where software is heading (can you hear the toilet flush).
Last point from me – Apple continues to innovate with their mobile phones, music devices and computers (and OSs). There is a reason that millions of people are swapping to Mac vs. Windows. Its cleaner, easier, faster and there is less dependency on software. When all you need is a browser and the web….MS doesnt look so good.
There is a reason the MS phones and music players are dead.
(OH yeah, and lets not forget that MS is moving to the cloud themselves…..)
How many paid users to google apps are there?
I mean how many 50$ per year they are getting??
Hi,
Does anyone know how secure Gmail service is? I have been sending emails back and forth; and collecting data and storing it in google docs for my new startup. Apparently, all the information from Google docs and Gmail came out, and got leaked.
I have been checking safety of my account, it was never accessed from any other location – IP address; other than mine; nor is my PC hacked.
Can anyone help me? Or give more safer alternatives?
—-
This deal was all but won back in 2007. I know because I moved to France to design, deliver and demonstrate the proof of concept as a strategic consultant before handing it over to CapGemini for the deployment.
Back then it was really big news… just a pity it took 2-3 years to work its way through to the public eye.
Sam
MS Office is the standard. The switching cost of changing is so high for the majority of large corporations.
Google Apps can make a lot of money serving a niche. Namely smaller businesses who’s needs are not as complex.
http://www.tom.com
Well, actually I don’t believe that MS Office ever die, just b/c too many people tied to it already. On other hands Clouds solutions are growing but general trend is not exited. Compare 500 M of MS Office users with only 4 M of only unique users of Google Docs.
Next year, when MS will unviel MS Office 2010 with Online Version many people will just forget about Google or Open Office.
But at the same time I’m doing intergration between Office 2003/2007 and Google Docs (www.upriseapps.com) , b/c I believe that these is no be a majority of those who’ll move to Office 2010 imidiatelly after release.
It is one thing to license software, it’s a totally different thing to imply that they actually use it. For all the headlines of companies buying gApps, very few actually describe the end user experience in terms of productivity gains, interoperability or even the training costs. And, there’s nothing said of the IT costs involved or whether the numerous FAILS of gMail and the general cloud infrastucture has had an impact on their business. Why? Because I think that, like OpenOffice, once the crowd dissipates, most (all?) organizations look at the time, expense and risks of their investment and realize they’ve made a huge mistake.
Will gApps cause Microsoft to act differently? Most assuredly; it’s in their nature to seek out competitors and pummel them into the ground. But I wouldn’t mistake their latency in getting into enterprise-class cloud computing as a sign of failure. Rather, with hundreds of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of customers that depend daily on their platform, there’s a higher bar for them than Google, and dumping things into the online domain with a Beta moniker slapped on them and thinking that’s ok.
The bottom line: I’m still waiting for any of these companies that have licensed gApps to truly demonstrate cost savings over time, end user productivity gains, and positive impact to their ability to be competitive in their markets.
It’s not about hating Google or loving Microsoft. It’s about holding both companies accountable for demonstrating ROI, TCO, etc. and to date Google has been getting a pass.
They are falling like dominos now, shutting off exchange, notes, etc. First year cost savings are massive across the board, especially in the 5K employee and up accounts. Keep your eye on the Google Enterprise blog. The next few months will give the data points you are looking for…real ROI, and evidence of a tipping point being approached.
I can tell you after working extensively in both platforms that there is absolutely no comparison. Google Apps is far superior and now I feel like I’m riding a bike through sand anytime I work in Office. Mainframe, Client/Server, Cloud – different game, different players. There is nothing overly complicated about cloud computing and the enormous benefits of multitenancy but it puts MSFT in the pure innovator’s dilemma. They sell server and desktop software – period. No servers, no desktop, no revenue. They have to completely redevelop Office from the ground up to make it a multitenant app – they are 5 to 10 years behind the true cloud vendors.
We use Office only because our old bosses don’t get the Cloud and it does require a more agile partner community but make no doubt this shift is happening right now and it is just going to gain momentum.
Google, Amazon, and Salesforce are the new big boys on the block. Disruptive technologies by definition first grow in the least profitable customer base but this trend is going to take the enterprise by storm.
As an end user I can’t wait until I can stop waiting for Outlook and Word to boot up just so I can do my job.
Office isn’t multitenant. It won’t be multitenant in the 2010 version. Just because MSFT builds data centers and hosts Office doesn’t make Office a cloud app.
Is it reasonable to think just because Office is so popular now it always will be … most end users don’t even know what the h*ll we’re even talking about. Google Apps is cheaper and provides a better user experience.
Change is good. Don’t be scared. Get your head in the clouds and enjoy.
The real issues here are downtime and security. Ask Lockheed Martin about unsecured networks with the latest security problems. There is nothing Google can do to make it secure and companies after all are responsible for proprietary information to shareholders and customers. Cloud shmoud, Google is going to guarantee me throughput as fast as my workstation sitting on the desk in fron tof me? Time is money and Googles cloud would take large amounts of it from any company foolish enough to trust it in the form of lost data and snails pace ISP’s. Go for it, the Chinese hackers need your help!
Its a good thing to have a change. Google, if competing with Microsoft its a good strategy.
cutting.
Thank you so much for this post, it was very insightful!
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I doubt Microsoft is as complacent about this as you appear to be.
She didn’t claim that MS is running scared. She is simply reporting that corporations are adopting Google App suites and that perhaps it is reaching a viable level of sophistication.