Google launches Google Apps Premier Edition to take
Microsoft head-on
Not really, though. Despite what the media says, and
despite getting Microsoft all twitchy, Google Apps Premier
Edition is no competitor to Microsoft Office.
One of the biggest earners of the Microsoft will come
under scrutiny today, when Microsoft's biggest rival, Google
unveils Google Apps Premier Edition, a paid-for office tool.
The threat is of course being played down by the Microsoft
officials, but industry experts have something more to say.
Google Apps Premier Edition is a collection of software
suite for corporate customers and will come with a
web-applications for e-mail, word processing and a
spreadsheet. Google Apps will be charged at USD 50 (EUR 26)
per user per year. The Google Apps takes Microsoft's
software stalwarts Word and Excel head-on.
Microsoft Office, which is included in the Business Division
of Microsoft, accounted for USD 3.5 billion of the group's
revenues of USD 12.5 in the last quarter, thus making it the
highest earner in terms of sales.
It is believed by many that Google has been looking for
sometime to milk the Microsoft cash cow and is also believed
to have built massive data-storage plants, which is said to
be far far advanced than those developed by Microsoft and
IBM.
The major issue that Google may have to face could be the
compatibility issue, as most of the corporate customers have
their existing software effectively embedded with
Microsoft's office tools, and so most probaby could be
reluctant to change to a new, unexperimented platform.
Another concern for the Google Apps could be the fact that
Microsoft Office 2007, which was released earlier this
month, is doing its task pretty effectively, according to
the reports from the industry. Microsoft has invested
another USD 2 billion for developing its own data centres.
Most of the Premier Edition components are available on the
net for free and its the first time that Google Apps users
would have to pay for the software that they use. Also
Google offers a contract which ensures that the Google Apps
product would be working 99.9% of the time. Also Google will
also offer 10 GB to each user an d will also support email
on RIM's popular handheld BlackBerry device.
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