Google Apps vs Office Web Apps

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:

Microsoft has invented an interesting way to promote its online office suite Office Web Apps. They have inbuilt their online office applications in the most popular Russian email service - Mail.Ru. Now when Mail.Ru users receive attached document they can view them directly in browser. There is no editing for now because Mail.Ru doesn't provide any document repository. Interestingly that Mail.Ru became the first in the world (after Windows Live Hotmail) email service with integrated Office Web Apps. And since Microsoft decided to hold this experiment in Russian internet, its quite strange that they partnered with Mail.Ru, but not with the biggest Russian search engine Yandex, which has more reasons to support Microsoft in their fight against Google. Perhaps because the Yandex-Mail already has its own document viewer. True, unlike Microsoft's it violates the document formatting and can't search in a document.

For now the SaaS suite Microsoft Office 365 includes e-mail server Exchange Online, portal Sharepoint Online, document editors Office Web Apps and communication server Lync Online. But Microsoft has plans to expand this suite and make it the one-stop-service for small and medium business. The BlackBerry Office 365 module has been already announced. It will provide Blackberry users the push-access to Office 365 data. Also, we have previously reported about the plans to add MS Dynamics CRM Online and the future MS Dynamics ERP to Office 365. And according to the latest (insider) information in late 2012 or early 2013 the suite will be expanded by the online version of project management solution MS Project and the diagram editor MS Visio.

When the MS Office Web Apps launched, only  the Excel Web App allowed to collaborate on online documents in real time. Now the trick is also available in the online Word. Though it's not so cool as in Google Docs. To let co-editors see your changes you have to click the Save button, then co-editors will see the notification in the status bar, then click Save and only then see your changes. There is no chat / comments like in Google Docs, but at least you can see who is currently editing every part of the document. Meanwhile co-authoring in the online Word works only in the free Windows Live Office (SkyDrive) and is not yet available in Office 365.

Today Steve Ballmer at the press-event in New York officially announced the launch of the cloud solution Office 365. And it's nice that it becomes available globally. Office 365 is offered in 21 languages (English, Br Portuguese, Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, and Russian) and 40 countries (US, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK).

Microsoft has finally killed the intrigue on the future of Silverlight in web-applications (recall this intrigue emerged at the end of last year). The new version of the online file storage Windows SkyDrive (which works as the basis of all Windows Live services) is completely rebuilt on HTML5 instead of Silverlight (even video player is now working on HTML5). SkyDrive is now much faster and supports all browsers (even Google Chrome). Along with the underlying technology shift, the developers have rebuild the service interface - it's now very similar to the Windows folder interface. Moreover, users of Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 can get to SkyDrive directly from the taskbar and with one click create Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents in Office Web Apps online editors:

Google continues to use the fact that the main competitor of the new MS Office 2010 is not Google Docs but Office 2007/2003. "Why should I pay some hundreds of dollars for the new Office 2010?" - user thinking. "First, it has more beautiful buttons. Second, you can sync with online Office Web Apps" - says Microsoft. "Hey, you don't need to update! " - Google enters the conversation - "Now you can sync between Office 2003/2007 and Google Docs in real time." Today Google has introduced Cloud Connect - the plug-in that allows to open documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Google Docs in MS Office applications, edit them and save back. Moreover, multiple people can edit the same document simultaneously and Google will keep track of the versions and conflict resolution.

Today Microsoft has rolled out the second update to its online office suite Office Web Apps and made it available in 7 more countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland. In the first update in August some very useful features appeared: charts and auto fill in Excel Web App and free clip-art gallery in PowerPoint Web App. Today update is also very interesting. Now you can embed PowerPoint presentations as well as Excel charts and tables to any site or blog. If you insert a table from Excel - visitors can change cell values to recalculate results, but the source excel-file in your account will not change. Conversely, if you change something in the original excel-file - table or chart in the widget will be updated too, so visitors always see the latest information. According to Microsoft, during the first 100 days from the release, Office Web App where used by over 20 million people.