Published on the 29/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
The two technology giants could well be competing for the same enterprise customers before long, says Dylan Persaud…
There have been many comparisons of Google Apps to Microsoft Office, whether it is the on-premise licensed version or Office365. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Personally I like Outlook and find it easier to use than Gmail. But preferences aside, the advent of Google Apps has rivaled Microsoft’s Office Suite and has caused many organisations both large and small to switch.
Last August I wrote about Microsoft’s new ‘super software’ and possible roadmap options when it acquired Skype. The roadmap was my interpretation of where Microsoft could incorporate Skype and become a powerful collaboration software to include instant messaging, video collaboration, white-boarding and even include some form of intranet capabilities to build teams and project spaces on the fly while storing and archiving structured and unstructured data through its Office integration. By combing Outlook with Skype, Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Project you get a powerful enterprise suite of productivity apps with full collaboration capabilities.
Enter Google and its strategy. It already has Google Apps and all the interconnected apps available within the Playstore for business productivity. The rumor of a possible WhatsApp acquisition sets the stage for Google Apps to add messaging. And with the Motorola acquisition you have to wonder how far behind video conferencing for the Google all in one suite can be. It would make sense for Google to create a productivity platform that includes Google Apps, instant messaging and some sort of video collaboration and that is where we think they may be heading. Look for Google to purchase some sort of video collaboration which it will add to its app suite and take another step towards enterprise validity and adoption.
It may then be only a matter of time before Google acquires a CRM that becomes part of the Google Apps Suite and then a component of project management with deep collaborative roots. With the wealth of apps available in the Playstore it would be easy to handpick a few of these apps and build a ‘super software’ that will already have users and infrastructure behind it.
Both enterprise software vendors offer many of the same products: a business productivity suite, search engines, cloud storage, hardware such as phones, tablets and the like. While Google is lacking in some aspects of cloud infrastructure options to offer its customers such as Azure and private clouds, this can easily be rectified by partnering with companies such as Amazon, or Rackspace, just as some ERP vendors have done to create a SaaS offering for their customers.
It will be interesting as to see where this war will go and how fast each vendor can provide what enterprises really want while keeping the costs reasonable.
