You must all be aware of the comedy of errors of the L.A. City Council Google Apps implementation. It is a classical egg on face story, which started with LA and Google showcasing it as a model implementation, where both would march into the gilded world of the cloud hand in hand with their head held high, help improve productivity, and save costs at that.
The happily ever after never happened.
Offline access has been the top requested Google Apps feature for quite some time now, especially after Google withdrew offline access through Google Gears last year to concentrate on HTML5 based technology. Finally, the promised offline access capability has been announced by Google. Offline Gmail access is available through a web app in the Chrome Web Store, and offline access to Google Calendars and Docs is seamlessly available through the same interfaces even if the net connection is off.
However, as Microsoft was quick to point out, offline access capabilities are severely limited. For one, offline Gmail access is a stripped down version of regular Gmail, and is accessible only through a specific version of Chrome used by less than 2% of browser users. On the other hand, users only get read only access to Google Docs online.
Life ain't fair, especially life on the internet.
Yes, we all know, FaceBook Messages is out. A single email style inbox which merges multiple text based formats – IM, text messages, email, in a single real-time format. You can choose to send or receive communications in any of these formats, and they will all be gathered in your FaceBook Messages inbox.
Wait, that sounds familiar.
During the run up to Office 365's launch, the market expected Microsoft to roll up Office Web Apps in Microsoft BPOS. Then the launch happened. A new product Office 365 was announced. “Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. And that this was the ""biggest commitment Microsoft has ever made" in bringing customer infrastructure into Microsoft data centers. Woaw!
So what is Office365?
One of the hardest figures to find anywhere, are the relative market shares of vendors in the messaging and collaboration market. I have split many hair ends trying to find the market share of MS Exchange in the messaging market, Google Apps in the collaboration market and so on.
There is extensive media coverage when Google Apps scores this win or that, or crosses a certain milestone in its user count (it recently crossed 3 million customers and 30 million users); and equally frenzied coverage when Microsoft BPOS gets a new enterprise customer, or crosses a certain landmark.
I was sent an interesting article by Pankaj from HyperOffice. The article speaks about the emerging trend of players in the enterprise collaboration space offering "integrated" suites, which include communication, collaboration and conferencing tools.
Google Apps popularized this approach by offering Gmail integrated with Google Docs, Google Sites, Groups, Google Talk etc. And Google continues to add telephony capabilities (though not part of Google Apps yet) including the ability to call out to landlines and mobile phones from Gmail.
August proved to be a busy month, as Google Apps continues to churn out bountiful new enhancements and features. The rate of innovation at Google just keeps on speeding up, as it decisively proves the benefits of software-as-a-service to businesses. Microsoft, with Office Web Apps, seems to drag in contrast, its enterprise legacy seemingly in tow.
Talk about Google Apps users being left out from the coolest new updates to Google services. First, Google Apps users did not have access to all Google services, and the doors were rather belatedly opened; Google Voice is still not a part of Google Apps and so on. It has happened again.
Google announced its most exciting new feature a few days ago, and Google Apps has been left out again. Gmail users can now place calls using the Gmail chat feature. Previously, different Gmail users could have a voice and video chat online, but this new feature extends their reach to land lines and cell phones. If that wasn't enough, calls placed to US and Canada numbers are free "at least till the end of this year"!
Well, Google Wave hasn't quite died yet, but it has stepped into its final stages. A little over a year after Google Wave was born with much fanfare, Google announced a few days ago that it would discontinue development on Google Wave as a standalone product, citing low adoption as a reason. The site will continue to be supported till the year end, after which Wave will truly be buried and nailed. Its technology however, will continue to be extended for use in other Google products.
I can't help but be a little heavy hearted at Wave's demise, partly due to the fact that i hastily registered related domains in anticipation of Wave's runaway success. This apart, Wave was a great product, and almost everybody said so the time it was launched. It was the first true "real time" collaboration platform. It introduced the revolutionary concept of character by character co-authoring, a feature since integrated in Google Docs. It blurred the somewhat artificial distinction between email, documents and IM. It promised to be email for the modern era.
Google Apps keeps adding these little conveniences. Remember trying to log into two Google accounts from the same browser, and the only way to do it was to either sign out from the first and sign into the second, or simply open another browser. A minor annoyance.
Now Google lets you sign into two accounts from the same browser. All you need to do is enable multiple sign in by visiting google.com/accounts and clicking the link next to "Multiple sign-in." After you sign into your first account, you can sign in to two additional accounts from the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of Gmail as follows:-
Googleappsbuzz, as the name suggests, is designed for anyone who is interested in Google Apps, especially for businesses - users, potential users, experts or just lay geeks who can't get enough of Google Apps. This site will bring you up to the minute opinions, news, reviews, expert reviews, resources, articles, how-tos, videos on the subject.
The Google Bee (that's me) would love to get your feedback, or hear from you if you think your resource deserves to be included in the site. You can contact me at gb (at) googleappsbuzz (dot) com.
