Duffbert's Random Musings

1 - Tom,
If only Outlook could work against Domino easily, and it could, but not if you want everything else like Calendar/Scheduling which I believe Google has pulled a Microsoft and said "that will be coming...soon".
So as usual, the ones who ONLY use email could care less.
Your thoughts are in line with why Lotus did DAMO and I think Ed covered that really well between his post and his replies on Stuart's blog about it.
Maybe Google can break Microsoft's back, but it will also hurt IBM in doing so and our beloved Domino.

2 - I remember (quite vividly I should add) meeting with JD some years ago, and talking with someone high up the food chain in the IT group. The gentleman asked me about how I would ensure the delivery of mail, to which I responded with an overview of some technical means. After a minute or two, he interrupted me and insisted the answer was an SLA, and I remember being dumbfounded by this answer. SLAs are of course useful in an outsourced environment but only serve to assign responsibility (or avoid it as the case may be) for providing a service -- it doesn't really ensure a service.

So JD (among others) wants to simplify their IT infrastructure. Good luck the next time GMail fails and most of the planet is screaming at Google. Don't get me wrong -- GMail is a great service, but like every other human endeavor, it is not perfect.

3 - @David

As your statement about "Nothing is perfect" is completly true it has nothing to do in the real world. If you are an IT Manager and you need to make a decision. You would never decide to not doing something because of the statement "Nothing is perfect" at the end you will go with the option which costs the less and gives you alll you want. So the only real thing what would be option an IT Manager needs to consider would be. Do I like that all my businnes data is stored off-site readable by everybody in that organisation.

4 - The issue I see with the enterprise version of Google Apps is that you really aren’t getting what you think you are getting

For example, although Google says you never have to delete anything what happens when you do and you need it restored? Uh sorry they don't back up the data - they just replicate it. What about support? Well that falls on you and your IT team. Google won't be taking calls when the email that was sent to you is missing the attachment or "Outlook" won't start because of a corrupt PST file.
And the talk of less infrastructure is just that...talk. Chances are you will have to beef up your Internet connection to handle the load. What you say? It's just web email - why would my bandwidth needs go up? I wish I knew but that is what I have seen happen. That and having network operations start sniffing traffic because a user is constantly timing out when connecting to Gmail using a web browser.
So you may think you are getting email service with less infrastructure - what you are really getting is an email service that you still have to support, that you won’t be getting the same services as you did before, and that sounds like it will save you money but in the end doesn’t save you anything.

Organizations that are considering Google Apps need to do so with their eyes wide open and critically think about what they gain and what they lose - not about what's cool and in.

For what it's worth when they moved people to Gmail here there were screams of bloody murder...they all wanted Lotus Notes back

5 - @Jim,

So are they still screaming or was this only happening on and a few weeks after the conversion? Also, define "many".

6 - @David: "Good luck the next time GMail fails and most of the planet is screaming at Google."

How many outages did Gmail really have? How is this different on premise? Enterprises never have an outage, performance problem or even planned downtime? I don't have any numbers but I put more trust in Gmail's uptime than any other on premise uptime.

Plus, if you cannot live through a few hours per few years of email downtime, I wonder what business you are in, no disrespect.

7 - One more thing I forgot to add...

@Jim, do you really think that enterprises do not realize that they are getting a much more basic service compared to on premise when they sign the contract with Google?

I'm still surprised that so many of us are doing feature to feature comparisons of on premise versus the cloud. It's not about that. It's about getting rid of a whole lot of infrastructure and people that you would need to run an on premise commodity in exchange of a basic, "good enough" service at a very low cost. It's business, not features.

8 - @7 I do think some companies are blinded by all the hype about getting rid of the infrastructure and don't realize all the ramifications. For example said company did not realize Gmail isn't backed up until after users were moved over. So yes, I do think some organizations don't realize what they are getting when they sign the contract.
I also know for a fact you don't get rid of the "people" - you just switch them to supporting that shiny new service you bought.

If the main goal of business is to save money over giving employees the tools they need to get the job done then I guess I don't get it.

9 - "So instead of us saying "we'll give them an Outlook connector to Domino""

Well, we really shouldn't be doing that anymore, either.

{ Link }

10 - @Jim, I agree that indeed you cannot simply get rid of all people, it depends on the type of people. You will need less or no infrastructure and admin guys, yet still need support guys.

"If the main goal of business is to save money over giving employees the tools they need to get the job done then I guess I don't get it."

I find this statement a bit simplistic. You imply that a cloud service does not offer enough functionality to end users to get the job done. This is highly subjective and personal:

At work I'm stuck using Outlook, which I hate. My email needs are receiving and sending emails and some basic agenda functionality. Outlook confronts me with tons of crap I don't want and is a resource hog that slows me down in using other programs on my system.

I very much prefer the simplistic, fast, "get out of my way" functionality of Gmail. It may have less features, but I see that as an advantage. ANY email client I have used (Gmail, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird) gets the job done. It's just email. A commodity. That's why it's offered in the cloud.

11 - @Ferdy
"I very much prefer the simplistic, fast, "get out of my way" functionality of Gmail. It may have less features, but I see that as an advantage."

That's my whole point from the beginning. Gmail does not have all the features and functionality AND organizations do not realize they aren't getting all the functionality they think they are getting.

Gmail is good for what it is - simple email service. If an organization feels that this type of service will meet their needs then more power to them. If, on the other hand, users are frustrated by Gmail because they can't do things like directory lookups, return receipts, folders, etc has the organization really saved anything?