Google Apps vs Lotus Notes

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:

Companies like IBM and Microsoft love to confuse their customers with numerous services and titles. Not so long ago IBM launched the new mail service LotusLive iNotes, that costs $3 per month per user and provides corporate e-mail, contacts and calendar. And today IBM has unveiled another service called LotusLive Notes, that costs $5 per month and also includes e-mail, contacts and calendar. At first glance, the only difference is the price, but in fact the latest service is a multitenant SaaS version of Lotus Domino (Domino - is the name of server software in the traditional in-house Lotus Notes system). How it differs from LotusLive iNotes?

Email was the first collaboration tool in the Intarnet. Then intranet portals emerged, and they wanted to kill Email because of its lacks: instead of sending back and forth messages and documents, they are placed on a portal web-page (for example, in the news, on the forum or file cabinet). But due to the fact that people got used to e-mail and email was also used for external communications - intranet portals failed to replace the Email as a primary workspace. Moreover, recently Email launched the counterattack. And it happened because the major enterprise Email-solutions (GMail, Outlook, Lotus Notes) have become the platforms that allow third-party developers to add new functionality.

The world's most popular enterprise Email client, MS Outlook, is already equipped with various Enterprise 2.0 tools. Outlook is already integrated with social networks (Xobni and Outlook Social Connector), Google Apps, Google Docs (Harmony), Remember the Milk, etc. Now, when this place is crowded, the developers switched their attention to the second most popular enterprise Email client - Lotus Notes. Thus, the new plug-in + service Gist makes the same for Lotus Notes as Xobni for Outlook - allows you to see the social profiles of those with whom you communicate. Gist pulls the latest information about a person from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as recent news about his company from blogs and news sites. In addition, the plug-in displays in suitable form all correspondence with selected contact and files sent to/from him. It should be noted that Gist also works with Outlook, GMail, iPhone and may also be accessed as a web service.

When Google Apps Marketplace launched, we noticed that Google's partner Salesforce hadn't joined this ecosystem. Now it's clear why. Salesforce is building its own ecosystem of collaborative applications around Chatter. Although Chatter (Facebook for enterprise) is nothing like Google Apps (email + docs), however the aim of both tools is the same - collaboration. At the ChatterExchange presentation, Marc Benioff has clearly stated that Chatter will compete with MS Sharepoint and IBM Lotus Notes (he modestly omitted Google Apps). "Don't be confused that these systems have little in common" - said Benioff, - "the fact that Sharepoint and Lotus Notes were created back in these days when people didn't use Twitter and Facebook and when the top collaborative technologies were email and shared folders".

The geek-developer dream comes true: a full-on collaboration environment with an open API and a name right out of Star Trek. Today at the Lotushpere conference IBM unveiled Project Vulcan - the new cloud platform for collaboration and social tools, that is already compared to Google Wave. But unlike Google Wave, Vulcan - is not a separate application, but an integrated environment for all future and existing Lotus apps, including Lotus Notes and LotusLive. Vulcan will be available to developers in the second half of 2010, and meanwhile it will be available to LotusLive Labs team, which has already shown 4 new projects for LotusLive:

From today IBM starts providing Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging - the hosting service for the popular email and collaboration software. I.e. IBM will host Lotus Domino in its data center and users will access it either through the web interface Domino Web Access, or via a mobile client Lotus Notes Traveler, or in the standard desktop client Lotus Notes.  And IBM will outsource support, virus and spam filter. According to IBM, service is not a classic SaaS solution based on multitenant architecture. For each client the dedicated Domino server will be maintained. The cost of using Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging - is $10 per user per month.

The new version of IBM's collaborative software Lotus Notes 8.0 includes a free office suite for editing documents called Lotus Symphony. It includes a word processor, spreadsheets and presentations editor. As well as the new version of Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony applications are built on the Eclipse platform and support ODF format (Open Document Format for XML) - it's an open non-proprietary standard, which is an alternative to Microsoft's Open XML. Lotus Symphony will compete not only with MS Office, but also with online Google Docs. In addition to the office suite, the new version of Lotus Notes features a new modern interface in the Web 2.0 style and a lot of new options for managing mail, calendars and contacts.