Google Apps vs Basecamp

We continue our series about how Microsoft doesn't like Google. At this time - the remake of the old TV series Moonlighting with Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, starring Google as Bruce Willis. It's not just funny movie about Google Apps, but also a good opportunity to practice your English (if you need). And we hope that Google will fire back with its own quirky advert.

While the deal between Google and General Motors is still unpublic, Google has officially signed another large Google Apps customer - the largest Spanish banking group BBVA. BBVA plans to implement Google Apps for 110 thousand employees in 26 countries up to the end of 2012. Thus, Google has updated its personal SaaS record (in terms of project volume). It's interesting that BBVA moves to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange (so Office 365 loses again). Besides, this deal will be a huge step forward for Google and for the whole SaaS industry because it's the largest SaaS project in the banking sector. After all, we all know how carefully banks  protect their commercial data. See also the Top 5 largest SaaS projects.

According to the latest insider information, GM is already about to move from their current collaboration system Lotus Notes to Google Apps. It's about 100 thousand seats. At first this information appeared earlier this month - when the Wall Street Journal reported that Google and General Motors signed a preliminary agreement according to which GM will test Google Apps and Google has to meet some additional requirements. But GM haven't made the official statement yet. If all goes well, then Google will update its personal record on the SaaS project size. So far, the largest Google Apps customer is Valeo - 30 thousand users. And of course, it's a big victory for the SaaS market. But it's not clear yet what additional requirements GM presented to Google. Won't Google transform the service in favor of big business and make it less usable for small business?

One advantage of Google's main advantages over Facebook is that the search giant can perfectly integrate businesses and individual users (clients) in the single network (Google +). And if it succeed, Google+ will become the successful platform for advertising, unlike Facebook, which hasn't achieved the significant progress in the advertising incomes yet. The first big step in this direction has been done by Google today: from now Google Apps Now users can log in to Google+ under their corporate accounts and use Google+ for business needs. First, Google+ can serve as a social layer via creation of business/project groups (circles) with employee profiles. Second, it can be used as an intranet microblogging system for discussions and file sharing (like Chatter, Yammer ...). Third, it allows to search and support customers via Google+. But of course, the killer Google+ for business is its video chat app Google Hangouts.

Google Apps for Business gets a new interesting feature - the read (i.e. open) notification. It works this way: you send a message and if you don't receive the reply for a long time, you can open the message and check whether the recepient has read it or not. The notification can be enabled by Google Apps account admin for all users and works only for internal communications (within the domain). Thus, you can make internal collaboration more strict and possibly more effective. Because employee, that sends an important task via email can control its reception and if necessary can call the recipient and ask to check the mail.

During the last 2 weeks Google has almost made another revolution on the Web. No one expected that in the near future someone will be able to break the social monopoly of Facebook, but it looks like Google will succeed at this time. And because today in order to be successful, any business should be a part of the Social Web, then, want-or-not you have to sort out how to use Google+. Fortunately, there is still enough time, because the network is now working in a half-closed mode (registration is by invitation only). Additionally, the key business features will appear only in the second half of the year. But meanwhile you can get used to them:

It wasn't so easy to create a list of the largest SaaS projects. Because though SaaS vendors would like to promote themselves, they often have no clearance from customer to go public on their deployments. Sometimes, when a dispute on the largest projects starts, they claim that they have a customer with XXX users, but don't tell what customer and provide no proof. Therefore, our rating is based on unverified information. However, it is interesting that neither Salesforce nor Google Apps are included in it. And four out of five deployments - are talent management (or human capital - HRM) systems:

As one of the Enterprise 2.0 classics said: "If I had more time, I would have created a simpler application". That's how 37Signals (the company behind the project management app Basecamp) is spending its time. Basecamp was launched about eight years ago and since then it remained almost unchanged. Every new feature was added only if it was really necessary. Due to this, Basecamp has retained its simplicity and effectiveness. But it turned out that the Basecamp developers during all these years not only defended the app from the complications, but also have been inventing more perfect and simple structure. And this year they decided to roll it out. It's hard to believe, but the new version of Basecamp is even easier and more effective.

37Signals decided to market a combined package of its key SaaS services for business - 37signals Suite, similar to how Google sells its services as Google Apps. 37signals Suite includes Basecamp (project management system), Highrise (CRM system), Campfire (group chat, which can be used as communication tool in this bundle) and Backpack (group organizer+wiki, which can be considered as an intranet portal in this bundle). The integration between applications in the package doesn't rock for now, but at least the user base will be unified. 37signals Suite is prices so that in most cases it's cheaper to buy the whole suite than two separate services. Price starts at $99 per month - for 35Gb of memory, 35 projects in Basecamp, 20000 contacts in Highrise, 5000 pages in Backpack, 50 simultaneous chats in Campfire. Though it seems much more expensive than the cost of Google Apps (50$/year), but you shouldn't forget that Google charges this fee for each user, and in 37Signals Suite the number of users is unlimited.

Let's start from what happened last week. Without any announcements 37Signals dropped a low end plan from the Basecamp sign-up page ($24/month for 15 projects and 5GB of disk space). Now, the cheapest option on this page is $49 for 35 projects and 15 GB. Of course, this caused a loud reaction of bloggers and competitors. Bloggers started speculating that Basecamp feels so confident that has lost interest in small business. Competitors started pitching their alternative services and Zoho even pushed the promotion for customers switching from Basecamp to Zoho Projects. 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried has clarified the situation. "In fact, Basecamp hasn't raised prices. Existing users continue to pay the same price for the same subscription plans. The company is just experimenting with the sign-up page design. The $24 plan is still available (inside) for those who sign-up for free account and then wants to upgrade". Nevertheless, the idea of the experiment is clear: Basecamp focuses on the more "expensive" clients. Here's why:

Jason Fried, 37Signals co-founder, exactly knows how to create beautiful systems. Basecamp users and Ruby on Rails developers know this. Recently he published the video with his vision of how to create a beautiful workspace (on the example of 37Signals) and how online tools can help. Jason started with the fact that in most companies collaboration is organized absolutely wrong. It's based on the constant interruptions. Employee just turns on the computer, and the interruptions begin: instant messages, email notifications, phone calls and of course, co-workers that come and ask something. No one can work productively in such environment. And, often collaboration software (especially messengers and microblogs) doesn't help to mute this noise, but increase it.

37Signals, the developer of online project management service Basecamp, according to the recent investment round, has become the most expensive company in the Internet services market. The group of investors, led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners purchased 0.000000001% of the company for $1. So, the potential 37Signals' market price has increased to about $100 billions. This was officially  announced in the company blog. During the company-wide meeting, dedicated to this event, Jason Fried (37Signals founder), announced, that all SaaS applications, developed by 37Signals, including Basecamp, will become free in order to attract more users and to reach the estimated userbase already in 2013.