‘Every dog has its day’, or ‘Is Google Apps the next big thing?’

I’m sad to say I have been involved in computing, particularly PCs since 1983; in other words since it started – now I feel old!  As a result I have seen a few trends come and go, I have seen good ideas fall by the wayside, and I have seen giant corporations disappear almost overnight.

To quote a few examples:

Spreadsheets

The original spreadsheet was called Visicalc and spawned hundreds of emulators (it’s a shame the inventor didn’t patent it) such as Supercalc, Multiplan and Lotus 123.  Of these it was Lotus that cornered the market with their user friendly, easy to use spreadsheet.  Then Microsoft came along with Excel and it’s very rare to find a Lotus user nowadays.
Word Processing
The universal word processor was called Wordstar and was the most widely used in the world during the mid 80s.  It was pirated so much that Wordstar calculated that software piracy was their best sales tool with users learning on an illegal version and then purchasing or recommending as a result of their experience.  Wordstar was overtaken by WordPerfect which dominated the market throughout the late 80s and early 90s.  WordPerfect was a massive corporation but Windows came along and they were late in developing their Windows version and so now everyone uses Microsoft Word.

Networks

The best and most reliable networks were Novell.  Although there were competitors, Novell dominated the networking market for almost two decades.  Then along came Microsoft…

Anyway, you get the idea.  The point I am trying to make is that big corporations come and go, and not that Microsoft makes the best software. 

So what next?  Microsoft has cornered the market, become a giant corporation and is up on the pedestal waiting to be knocked down. 

I have been thinking for a while that our approach to computing is ready for a change.  A couple of years ago there was a lot of noise about the ‘next big thing’ being the ASP model.  ASP in this case stands for Application Service Provider whereby the user is served software across the internet.  The idea died a death because the Internet connections at the time were too slow and people distrusted the idea of someone else holding all their accounting data, business data etc.  A few years later and everyone is quite happy to tell everyone else their personal life story with applications such as bebo and facebook blazing the trail.  Just lately there has been a revival of this concept but it is termed Software as a Service (SaaS)

Get to the point Richard!

OK. So a while ago I visited a company where the offices only had one person and all the other employees worked from home or out on the road.  I thought how nice it would be for them to have a server hosted by an Internet Service provider and for them all to access their emails and documents from that provider.  At the time it wasn’t very feasible but now it is.

Now we’re at the point!

Google has introduced Google Apps Premier, a series of applications that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via a web browser, and shared (with appropriate permissions) amongst the employees of your company.  You get Messaging via Gmail (also known as Googlemail). Google Calendar which enables you to share diaries and calendars, and Google Talk for PC to PC telephone conversations.  Voice and video chat also available in Gmail.

Collaboration

Google Docs is a Word Processor – not as powerful as Microsoft Word but when did anyone ever need all the features of Word?  Google Video and Google Sites complement traditional office software to make teamwork easier. 

Security for on-premise email

Email security, and Web security is also available and will allow you to filter your employees web usage and make them more productive. It’s early days yet, but has Microsoft had its day? They’re working on a similar project for their next Windows version but Google Apps is here already.  We have customers using Google Apps and feedback has been very positive.

And if Google can get ir right... 

if you read my blog about mobile phones and email then Google Apps could clean up if they were to synchronise Google Mail (GMail) with the Google Android phone. It seems obvious so I made an enquiry with T-Mobile but although you get an email account with the phone, it can only receive copies of the emails from your desktop.  However, if you are using Google Apps for your email then you just use the web browser interface on your phone to browse your emails.

Now I can run my entire business from anywhere!