There is plenty of buzz in the blogosphere concerning Google’s debut of Google Apps Premier Edition. Scanning the blogosphere I found a number of interesting views on Google’s latest venture.
Tom Raftery wrote,” The biggest shortcomings in Google’s apps, right now is the lack of a presentation tool and contacts management but look to Google to address these soon. And obviously, because it is Software as a Service, the new functionality will just appear one day! No messy upgrading or downloading”.
He also cited an article from Information Week that pointed out that price would be a compelling factor for customers considering a switch from Microsoft products. Google offers their whole package for $50 per user, per year.
Richard MacManus weighed in writing,” For now, I’m a bit more cautious about this news. I see it more as just another step for Google towards a full Office suite. There’s still no presentations app, CRM…. or JotSpot for that matter! Google Apps is still a fairly loose package of web-based office apps, not as integrated as it could be yet. The strength of a Web Office suite is collaboration and other web native functionality – whereas desktop office suites have much more sophisticated functionality.”
In a forum post William wrote,” This is not very impressive…..It just the same google hype…about business applications that can never be any better than the offering that is currently available from Open Office…..The cost of the Open Office solution per user is 0….and unlike the Google offering it is open source…..this means that if your business needs to add some functionality they can do it….”
Others took a positive view about Google Apps Premier Edition. In a forum post DonS said,” I’m using Google Apps for my one-person business, and I’ve been happy with it. Simple setup, I can access my email anywhere, and everything is accessible from a simple URL.”
Whatever you may think about Google’s new offering it’s always good for the consumer to have more choices and options.
