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If you’re still skeptical about Google Apps and software as a service (SaaS), spend a day at Long Island’s Hofstra University.
Roughly 13,000 Hofstra students have access to Google Apps Education
Edition to collaborate online, according to Robert W. Juckiewicz,
Hofstra’s VP of IT.
The university’s ongoing experience with Google and SaaS — and
Hofstra’s future goals — provide some clear hints about how the
corporate software market may evolve to increasingly include Google.
Nobody is predicting the death of Microsoft Office, but it’s clear that Google Apps and Microsoft’s desktop productivity suite are on a long-term collision course.
Nobody is suggesting that universities running Microsoft Office will
pull the plug on that desktop suite anytime soon. After all, Office
provides a far more comprehensive feature set than Google Apps. Plus,
students don’t have to be connected to a network to access and use
Office.
Assuming the offline capabilities arrive this year and work as
advertised, Google Apps will become at least a partial replacement to
Microsoft Office over the next two to four years, predicts a Texas
college CIO, who requested anonymity.
But Google's SaaS efforts go far beyond productivity applications. Online storage could also become a commodity within the Google Apps framework.
The challenge for investors is to understand how SaaS services from
Google and others will eventually meld with so-called managed services.
Short term, keep an eye on Google's SaaS moves, and their potential
impact on Microsoft. Longer term, it's logical to expect some of those
smaller managed services firms to launch IPOs or seek acquisitions
within the next two to three years. Source:seekingalpha.com/article/66405-is-google-apps-the-next-microsoft-office
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| | Posted 2/28/2008 5:03 AM - 99 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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