The phrase “razor sharp focus” is a tired cliché in our field, but you have to hand it to Google. They have just announced a “two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.”
By building a tool to make this migration a “point-and-click” experience, they are hastening the defection rate for businesses looking for an alternative to Microsoft’s office suite. What’s more, three service providers – NuVox, Netfirms and IKANO – have already begun offering this tool to their customer base.
Google Apps Sync, as the migration tool is called, has already been put to use at enterprises like Genentech and Avago. Here’s some compelling Google propaganda:
It’s a case-study in business model disruption. The cost? One-sixth the price of Microsoft.
Of course we’re still in the “early days” and the jury is still out. Microsoft will surely counter with Azure, but you can see why Ray Ozzie is worried.
For Google, on the other hand, the state of cloud computing is promising. They claim around 1.75 million companies are running Google Apps. The enterprise, as Gray noted earlier, is ready for Cloud Computing. And why is this? We’ve mentioned the economics before, but here is Google’s take on the benefits of Cloud Computing.
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