| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Google - Cloud Computing

Page history last edited by Roger Rydberg 15 years, 1 month ago

 

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 02/06/2009 

 

By PETE BARLAS

 

Unseating Microsoft (MSFT) as the world's software leader is a tall order, even for the mighty Google. (GOOG) But the search giant sees a prime opportunity as budget-conscious businesses look to cut their technology spending.

 

To that end, Google hopes to convince resellers to help push the Web search leader's online software in a tight market.

 

Google's focus on cloud computing — a catch-all term for software hosted online — lets it introduce new software and update features much more quickly than Microsoft can do with packaged software. Google has also been aggressive in building out its applications to stir interest among customers, said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president, during the company's earnings conference call.

 

"We launched over 100 feature releases to our application suite in 2008," he said. "The big advantage of those Web-based applications is how quickly and easily you can push new features out to customers, and that you can build apps that otherwise wouldn't be available to businesses."

 

Case in point: Google has added instant-messaging, video and cell-phone text-messaging into its Gmail e-mail service in the last few months alone.

 

Rosenberg said Google has more than 1 million businesses with 10 million workers using Google's software applications.

 

"Momentum is particularly strong in the apps area," he said.

 

"Google feels that it's cheaper to leverage a channel and pay them a fee rather than build a very sizeable enterprise sales force," he said. "With Google, the reseller will own the customer and so even though they are going to get 20% of a smaller deal size, they can continue to be first-line support in billing and anything else that the customer wants to have done."

 

Google charges $50 per user per year for Google Apps. Microsoft Office software, which provides similar features, sells for $400 to $600.

 

The dire economy could make the choice easy for a struggling small business.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.