Midsize CIOs Not Clamoring For Google Apps
Midsize CIOs contacted by Channelweb.com indicated they don't have much interest in adopting the technology for their companies.
Bill Wintrode, IT director for Freedom Plastics, a Janesville, Wis.-based company, said cost and possible disruption in changing platforms won't have him installing Google Apps anytime soon. "We've looked at it a little bit, but we're staying with what we have," Wintrode said.
Rudy Kolb, director of IS at Rain Bird, an Azusa, Calif.-based irrigation products manufacturer, believes Google will have trouble attracting a lot of customers if it keeps only a cloud-based platform.
"All your information is not under control. I know very few people that would trust that kind of environment, especially for spreadsheets that carry the most sensitive information. For that reason, we wouldn't do it at all," Kolb said.
If Google created an application that was 100 percent compatible with Microsoft Office and resides on the client or internal infrastructure, Rain Bird might consider it, he said.
Rain Bird does use the Google Search Appliance internally because the data resides locally, Kolb said.
"Originally, Google offered to index local content and make it accessible through their searches. Then they came out with the search appliance. That was picked up well," he said. "We are very conscious about security. I would never have done it through Google, but we own the appliance now. If that separation is there [for Google Apps], then they have a chance to become a player," he said.
David Lindstrom, director of IT for RG Barry, a Pickerington, Ohio-based accessory and footwear company, uses Google Apps at home, but won't use it in the office.
For one, RG Barry just completed an upgrade to Vista and Office 2007, and Lindstrom isn't about to throw out that investment. He also didn't even know that Google had an enterprise-class Apps suite until last year's Midsize Enterprise Summit conference in Texas.
"They were pretty quiet about it. Right now, it's not on our road map and probably won't be for at least two years," Lindstrom said.
One CIO found Google so difficult to deal with regarding one of Google's security products that he said it would be hard to imagine implementing Google Apps.
"We wanted to test it and they said we would have to deploy and then cancel it if we didn't like it. That's not how large enterprises do it," said Niel Nickolaisen, CIO of Headwaters, a South Jordan, Utah-based energy, construction and resources company. "We've got 1,000 users. I'm not going to set it up and then figure out it doesn't work. I want 20 people we can test it on. They said we can't do it. We said OK, we've got alternatives."
Nickolaisen said Google later told him he could test the product, but by then Headwaters moved on to another vendor's product, he said.
With Google Apps, Google is also in a Catch-22 position of having companies not want to implement it because no one else, figuratively, has implemented it.
"Until there is much larger use of Google Docs, it's not worth the headache," Nickolaisen said.
Google executives have said they need the channel help meet all the demand they expect for Google Apps in 2009, but it appears as if the channel might be needed to generate that demand.