The Obsession with Google

I recently read a blog post by a friend of mine, Graham Lawlor, who admitted that he's a bit obsessed with Google. In his posting Graham references Google's "game changing" technologies such as search and web mail. Then he discusses how IM/Chat needs a game-changing application and that Google would be a prime player for such a change.

While Graham made some good points, as did the Forbes article that he referenced, I don't get the obsession with Google from within the tech community in the enterprise. Sure, Google changed, or actually defined the search landscape. And yes, it's obvious that they made a mint on the advertising model built around search. But how does this apply to the enterprise other than making lots of money from enterprises trying to advertise their brands on search results? I wouldn't be the first person to state that Google does or does not have a place in the enterprise. But I have to wonder, if it did have a place, what would that place be?

In trying to define that answer I tried to put aside my general feelings that Google is over-hyped. But I'm not sure I got too far on that. Here's why:

First, Google has some great products and they obviously have smart engineers. And they have a great brand, which will go a long way especially when trying to sell advertising space on the Internet. But I am having problems bridging the gap between advertising revenue and enterprise software revenue. A lot of people have been discussing how Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 will change the enterprise software landscape. This will be done by forcing application vendors to design new delivery models for their software applications, and make it easier for people to access their applications in more easily purchased and deployed formats. But does this mean that software will be free for enterprises because it will completely funded by an advertising model? I really hope not because as an end-user I would not be happy in that model. Maybe I am wrong and Google has some other strategy. The certainly wouldn't be the first ones to try it (witness Yahoo's not-so-recent move and AOL's recent move to create enterprise offerings).

Next, is the enterprise ready to move their data outside of their organization? While Graham comments that Google changed the game in webmail, webmail in fact has been around for a long time. While Google's interface is nice (although I actually like Yahoo's webmail interface better) and changes the paradigm for organizing email (because rather than filing them you simply search for them), I don't think that Gmail a) changes the game or b) that this will have a major impact on large enterprise software implementations. We simply haven't seen large organizations move their entire enterprise messaging applications external to their organizations, unless it is a managed environment rather than an open, hosted community. Do you think a major Investment Bank will move their email infrastructure into Google webmail? I am guessing no. The reason is that there are too many data points that require integration with the messaging infrastructure. For example, we have just spent years upgrading all of our products to integrate tightly with a corporate directory so that a user can be identified once for every application, including vertical line-of-business applications, within an organization. Now we are starting to see demands for integrating with the phone system, desktop video, video conferencing, and other items that require advanced levels of enterprise infrastructure. How would a Google messaging infrastructure integrate with a company's phone switch?

In my opinion, Google will surely have an impact on the enterprise. However, their impact may in some cases be indirect. Instead of directly changing the game by causing millions of messaging (whether it is email or IM/Chat) users to migrate to a Google model, I think Google will influence enterprise applications to upgrade their thinking and delivery of their applications. For example, we see that Microsoft Office 2007 has already integrated the concept of search throughout your entire mailbox, much in the same way that Google introduced this search in Gmail.

I also think that Google, and other managed/hosted infrastructures, will have an impact on small to medium size businesses that do not have large/existing messaging and directory infrastructures. These organizations will require a place to go to get their identity, and they will require a way they can login and communicate with others. However, I am not convinced that Google will be the one to solve this problem widely as I can't see a financial trader patiently watching advertisements flash on the side of their screen while they are trying to communicate price information to a potential customer. Instead, that trader will require an application that completely optimizes screen real-estate, one that meets all of their very specific compliance requirements and one that delivers messages faster than the messaging applications of their customers. Is this Google? We'll see…

Comments

[Nathan]

Instead of with a single monolithic 'revolutionary company', I think we'll be better off building diverse platforms produced and shared by diverse creators. Any single company, including Google, tends toward certain design logics. To protect and foster software creativity and diversity on the net, we 3rd, 4th and nth party software, constantly seeking out new original ideas. For chat - has anybody released open source chat clients? Would that be practical?

[Mike Persaud]

It's hard not to have a fascination with Google. They have changed the game as Graham says.

Premium Apps have introduced a new business model; $50 per seat per annum (£26 pounds in the UK) for 10GB of space, and depending of the share of market they are after they are likely to succeed. I don't think they have announced their target market share.

They've brought us many products that already existed elsewhere, but did it with search, simplicity and speed!

They are smart, there's no denying that, but their competitive edge is their speed. They launch products fast and as a globally recognised brand they grab their target market just as quick.

Now Google in the Enterprise is exciting, regardless of what industry.

When I first started to look at the Google Search Appliance about 12-18 months ago, I realised it was immature, but I knew that within 2 years, it would improve... and it surely did. It is constantly changing and eventually will become a serious contender in the enterprise space and by that I mean this year!

Our friends at Microsoft have been trapped in their own walled garden with both Exchange and Hotmail and found it hard to evolve (this was from the horses mouth). They are only succeeding now and I personally think this is due to a radical change under the influence of Ray Ozzie, (but that's another chat for another time).

Back to Google...If they put together an offering that provides:

- Migration
- Mobility
- Archiving
- Search
- Application Integration
- Identity Management
- Storage
- Business Continuity

They would grab the attention of many an Enterprise. For us in the banks and many regulated industries we need to know what is under/inside the 'Google cloud'. It's only a matter of time and in Google time that's soon. Personally, I think this is reality.

[Shawn DeVries]

Google Enterprise Search has certainly taken off in the last year. In fact, Google partnered with us in order to index the ENTIRE enterprise, not just HTML, PDF, images and the like. We are talking about SAP transactions, messages on MQ Series, calls into the mainframe, EDI messages from trading partners, etc.

Bob, imagine for a second you could also tie in backchat. Similar to Google Desktop (which seems to work pretty well) you could use one search interface for every customer transaction, purchase order, invoice, trouble ticket, sales quote, email interaction AND chat message that was logged via MindAlign chat.

Similar to the way MindAlign can integrate with SOX archiving solutions like Orchestria and the like, why not have the Google Appliance index everything INCLUDING chat? The holy grail of search - the fabled "360 degree view of the customer".

Mike, regarding your question on the offering, Google teamed up with us (iWay Software) and BearingPoint (through their BEEP offering) to handle a good chunk of what you mention. Pretty powerful things going on right now in the enterprise, including integration and security around search.

Great topic.

[Matt Lambert]

In the very early days of banking, I would imagine conversations argued whether the family business would trust their money to these new fangled organisations.

Similarly with hosted data service providers, I think the data trust issue will be mitigated over time for a lot of companies (except maybe banks), once you think how much damage would be done to google (share price) should any cats be let out of bags.

The massively scalable computing is where Google's competitive advantage lays - so says this link. http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html

The cost savings are also going to be a massive driver, particularly for education, $8M savings are impressive. http://communications.lakeheadu.ca/news/?display=news&nid=310

Unified Communications should also be a browser based application, as deployments with multiple applications with integrated desktop clients are just so expensive to maintain, like everything else Microsoft/Cisco.

The water is warmer than ever for Google, but only an opinion until something significant happens. Matt

[Tanith]

Good for people to know.