Virtual Reality Check

You can only go so far up ones own backside before you emerge into the same world at the other end. I made that and I am proud of it.

Online reputations are a wonderful thing if you are interested in them. I have no doubt that activities online will augment the standing you have in your business world and you can create wider and richer social networks. I am bought into all that. But if the current vogue of measuring your online reputation gets beyond the faddy fun scenario then we are in danger of promoting the wrong behaviour as drivers for future success.

You see one of the main drivers in the online world has been the urge to quench people's desires to be recognised for more fundamental reasons like love, relationships and sex plus for the business of basic hoodwinking. Yes we now have more business recognition sites like LinkedIn which helped people widen business networks and I have picked up several contracts from LinkedIn. But that changed about two years ago and now LinkedIn is the defacto research engine of choice for the recruiting world. People can advertise availability against which their profile can be matched for current jobs. And most of what goes on there is just that now.
There are many other business to business platforms but most are recognition seeking too. The Ecademy stands out as one site where business people are trying to do business with one another but most of that currently centres around networking itself which is fine.

What you cannot get around is that relationships have to be formed in the real world. Violent people can appear angels on the web. I pose the question that if Al Capone and Mother Theresa were alive today and actually used the web, who would have more Klout or value on Empire Avenue? It's obvious what the answer would be and is that a good thing?

You want to really influence people? Go learn from Rupert Murdoch. He doesn't Twitter people he goes see them or sends his agents. Google spent $2.06m on Government lobbying last year, yet they own Google Plus. The real world has not changed. You cannot cover up rubbish service by sweet talking Twitter accounts at the Carphone Warehouse, but you can win more sales by having a cool website and natty Twitter manner. Reality bites in the end.

People need to learn that ultimately you will be judged by who you really are, not who you virtually pretend to be and that's where reality is the best checker. Fancy CVs no longer impress me, interviewing people finds out what really makes them tick - even over the phone. The last batches of LinkedIn recruits I saw at one company were the lowest calibre I have seen yet their profiles spoke volumes of achievements.

My advice. Trust your instincts. Check people out. Don't give more credence to online reputations without checking as anything goes on the web and the most influential person could be the clown of the web who just posts heavily on Facebook in work time or 'a happy go-lucky girl' who might or might not have stuck insulin into saline drips killing 4 people or someone who has convictions for violent relationships and appears so sweet.

Reality check - you know it makes sense.

Cloud Survey & Facts

Microsoft released data from its SMB Cloud Adoption 2011 Survey this week.

It reveals that across the globe, 39% of SMBs will pay for levels of Cloud services in the next 3 years which is a sharp increase in numbers since the last survey was done a year ago. The figures point to SMBs taking an average of 3.3 Cloud based services.

The figures were interpreted to show that SMBs and Enterprise customers alike will mix on-premise based solutions and Cloud based and have some level of hybrid services. The interesting finding is that the larger the SMB, the more Cloud based services they will buy over the next 3 years. Some 56% of companies with between 51 and 250 employees will buy on average 3.7 Cloud based services.

Here's an interesting statistic - within 3 years, 43% of workloads will become paid Cloud services while 28% will remain on-premise and 29% will be free or bundled with other services. Heart warningly 82% of SMBs say buying Cloud services from a provider with local presence is critical.
An interpretation of the data by Microsoft itself is that Cloud services adoption will be gradual over the next 3 years and that there will remain a mixture of Cloud based and on-premise applications - so existing infrastructure will need to remain. But as equipment reaches the end of its life cycles, more and more companies in the SMB market place will start to consider Cloud based alternatives for the future.

I refer to such milestones as 'Compelling Events' when kit needs to be upgraded or hardware comes off maintenance contracts or a significant refresh of kit is required.

The good news for the Channel is that it appears local support and supply is key. Plus it is presumed that more resellers will take 'White Label' Cloud services such as co-hosting, back up, archiving, disaster recovery, unified communications, remote desktop support and email solutions in future.

Drivers to the Cloud are reaffirmed in the survey. Companies want to get greater scalability in their business to match growth expectations, drive down costs and profitability up, and pay-as-you-go models are becoming increasingly attractive. Obtaining more smooth and predictable costs when growing rather than lumpy IT costs are more desirable for businesses and their investors.

Much of the above merely augments the view of Cloud fans like myself. It doesn't necessarily address some of the obvious concerns and blockages like security and data management to help persuade people but it certainly validates what is the perceived opportunity to vendors and Channel players.

What it also doesn't address is how Channel players should take advantage of the opportunity but a clear message is that Channel companies should be looking to offer a range of options from hosting, applications, to deployment services and support. But there is a definite demand for clear solutions beyond simple software offerings.

What is clear is that as the adoption of Cloud services grow, there will be a corresponding decrease in the usual software application opportunity and the server/storage usually associated with on-premise solution. The two models in terms of sales revenue and cost structure are very different. A £100,000 on-premise sale today creates the lump of profit to fund current sales activity. But if that sale collapsed to a potential £4,000 a month then many resellers will be top heavy in terms of cost.

The quid pro quo is that as annuity style revenues accrue over time by renewing these deals and growing the user bases, then by 3 years down the line there will be a substantial monthly revenue flow that will have accumulated well above the cost structure.

So modelling the costs, realigning resources and reassessing commission models will be fairly fundamental for vendors and resellers alike. This is probably the most important area of understanding required by the industry in The Cloud as getting this right can yield huge results. Getting it wrong can bring ruination.

SaaS veterans like myself have long understood that selling software and services on a monthly annuity basis versus capital spend needs different selling skills, a different mentality and a very different incentive structure. Vendors and resellers should know that the initial decision for an end user to go into Cloud solutions is only the point at which the real sales effort starts. Instead of revelling in the deal volumes and the bloated commission cheques, salespeople need to drive adoption and usage from the first moment of deployment.

That requirers an entirely different sales mentality and incentive structure. Large software vendors are already making big mistakes in the reward structure and margin opportunities for the Channel maintaining the old 'sell and forget' model of reward. The margin and reward structure needs to incentivise on a basis of 1) Initial deployment, 2) Adoption driving, 3) Usage driving, 4) Renewal securing, 5) Driving upgrades.

There has to be enough 'skin in the game' to make selling after the initial deployment worthwhile as that is where the real profit lies in The Cloud.

Small Business? Think Big

If you are a small business, the last thing you need to worry about is how much reserves and capital you need to keep on hand to expand. If the opportunity presents itself, you just want to take advantage of it.

I have bleated on about The Cloud and so it is best to illustrate how to organise your IT so that you don't have to worry about it as you grow. You just add users as and when you need to rather than having to worry about whether you have enough storage and dedicated servers to run your business. It also practical advice on how to secure your data from the most common threat - forget hacking, it's good old theft.

So here's a heads up on a few recommendations. I started my small business using TASBooks software. It's a great, easy to use package and even a non-skilled finance person like me can easily keep my books up to date. I farm out my payroll to a professional who for £150 per quarter does the payroll calculation, sends the necessary filing to HMRC, calculates my VAT and does the same and my P60 once a year. It's a good service. Because I have some international customers, I now use TASBooks 2 which has multi-currency. I have needed some support so I now pay £372 a year for support which I use infrequently, but when I do I need it badly! So it's a no brainer, I have to have it and it at least gives me the odd upgrade too.

Then I pay an accountant once a year to do my return plus produce my accounts. That's around £1,800. In total then, I spend around £372 plus £600 plus £1,800 just for accounting which for the financially minded is £2,772. I could shave a bit here and there if I tried but that's the sum of it to date and it make me feel reasonably secure.

What are the limitations? Well the TASBooks requires a PC to run the software and I need to back up all the files which are not big. So I have Acronis software and 500Gb pocket drive. This means I have to be attached to the unit to do the nightly back ups but they get done. Goodness knows how I would restore but let's just assume I can. The backups often fail - I don't know why but I get error messages which I don't understand and I don't have time to check. I just hope the next night it works.

My laptop is my work machine and so it runs the TASBooks and the back up manager - and if I want to do any accounting stuff on the fly in some down time, then that's the machine I have to use. If I am on the road, I can't back up - pure and simple.

I used to run ACT from Sage as well and keep a support contract which last time I paid was £180 per year. I found I didn't need much support but I could never get functions like group mailings working. Also, it requires back ups and it runs on my laptop.

I actually have a hosted Exchange Server at Fasthosts for around £90 a year and I host my domain there too for another fee and I get around 2Gb of mail storage space there in the deal. My website is controlled by en external contractor and consequently it hasn't been updated for at least 3 years.

I am a small businessman on the road. The issue for me is if I am on business and either my laptop breaks down or I get robbed, my entire business fails. It's that weak a set up.
Only my email is half resilient as I could start up again with a new machine quickly and Fasthosts have all my mail data safely on their data centre site in Gloucester and their tech support is pretty good. People try to sell me PC maintenance but you cannot replace data and applications too. If they are lost it is a nightmare trying to piece it all back together. And as a small businessman, I haven't the time or money to think about building in resilience. There is the nightmare of reloading all those little programs I use too like PDF complete. My business is billing clients.

So here's an alternative. Either host your Exchange server as I do or go with a Cloud based solution. Microsoft 365 at £15.75 on their absurd charging levels is the starting point of choice and grin and bear the lunacy of running it locally, having a SharePoint back end that you will have to work around but at least you are resilient. Google Apps is another alternative at $50 per user per year but for those working in Government areas the servers are unlikely to hold your data in this country while if you work a lot with MS Office people you may find annoyances around compatibility of files. But the advantage is that you can access your mail and files from any device including a smartphone.

Then your accounts. I am now looking at going with www.inniaccounts.co.uk. It has a starting price of £69 per month and this not just gives you online accounting software backed up in The Cloud and accessed anywhere via the web but it also gives you, in the cost, all the bits that I have detailed I outsource as above. An accountant at hand to do your filing, VAT returns, and your end of year accounts plus payroll. That's just £828 per year all in. That's a saving of £1,944 for me.

I have also gone Salesforce.com for my CRM and that was on a deal at £120 for the year. Now I can group email to my heart's content but all my data is backed up online and I can access the program from my iPad and laptop or any machine anywhere, any time. That's a saving on annual costs of ACT of around £60 but with the data automatically cared for.

Then there is Evernote of which I am a huge fan. At base level this is free. It allows you to keep multiple note books on things like projects into which you can pile web pages of research, files, emails - anything. It's all online so it's automatically backed up each time you add something and it is synchronised over Android and iPad if you want so these notepads are available to all, automatically as well as working offline. The premium version which gives more space is £26 a year. Microsoft OneNote, it's big competitor which I bought and never used, is a few hundred pounds.

It's my end of year this month, so I am thinking about these things as I am faced with an upgrade dilemma on my excellent Lenovo X200 laptop. I am on Windows XP and Office 2007 although the Exchange Server is actually Office 2003. I now do around 80% of my work on my iPad and love it as it is convenient for emails and note taking plus working in Salesforce.com. I have to go back to the PC for things like accounts and presentations as everyone works in PowerPoint and I need to project things which the iPad is weak on and printing is not a good solution yet.

But to upgrade it will cost me £134 for Windows 7 and £350 for Office 2010 and I am not sure it will work with my hosted Exchange. I have trialled MS Office 365 and Google Apps and on cost and usability Google wins but it's a Microsoft world and I cannot be an island of incompatibility with my clients - or just risk it. But MS 365 is so annoyingly clunky and not simple - it just peeves me that this is the best that the largest software company can produce with all those vast resources of brilliant people at their fingertips. Think customer, for goodness sake!

Rant over, I have to work out which way to go and it's likely to be MS 365 at £15.75 per month. While I just have to sort out the main back up and retrieval software as Acronis is ok but I want something more flexible. Of course, my data is sensitive and I don't want Americans snooping at it, as one comment was made to my blog yesterday, but our mails and data can be monitored any time if so desired so get real. Phones can be hacked too easily and banking details can be blagged simply as we have all just learned. I argue strongly that for the small businessperson it is far too hard to be as secure as the major vendors in terms of data control and security. We don't have the money, the scale and the time to do it as good as Microsoft or Google. So a solution outsourced to either, in my terms, is far more secure than what I have today.
If someone steals my laptop, they have everything. If someone hacks a server in an office or gets a back up tape or a stray USB or someone leaves a laptop on a train with the customer database on it, then they have the crown jewels. When it's all on the web, the laptop is a useless to them on that front.

So in my above examples, I would save a considerable amount of money if I go to online accounts. I have already saved going with Salesforce.com and Evernote. And it's likely I will succumb to Office 365 which also gives me a new website although I am toying restarting using WordPress as it is so simple, associated with blogs which I do all the time, and it's darn cheap (plus there is a free app on the iPad so I can update it on the fly).

Just with some simple thoughts, I can off load all my IT worries to The Cloud, save money, get security and resilience, avoid expensive one off upgrades and scale up if I need to at a smooth monthly cost. I even replace my very nice accountant which is the only downside.

But business is business.

The Cloud? Nah, it'll never take off

The Cloud? Nah, it won't happen. People still want to have their cosy Microsoft Office environment on their tight knit and safe Corporate network.

In less than two years something odd has happened. In more then one major quoted company I have worked with, over 10% of the user community now use Apple Macs as their PC of choice. These companies are not fuzzy designers or lovey media types they are plain old IT companies with rules and regulations on what PCs they buy and what applications the company network runs. They even have rules and regulations on internet use and social media restrictions during work hours. They are completely normal.

So how the heck did these Apple Macs get in there?

That Steve Jobs is a canny sort. He reinvented a company that was almost dead, out of cash and ideas and not just saved it but turned it back into a being vibrant, successful company again. And in doing so he changed the Corporate world. Central to all of it was The Cloud - without it he could never have achieved it. You see, Jobs took gadgets and made them the must-have devices of choice of businesspeople. First iPods - no threat to the IT status quo there. Then came iPhones and suddenly we had a funky device that linked to a shop online that also backed up your data and you could buy tons of applications easily - and cheap as chips.

It was first in the wave of clever smartphones that we all wanted. But surely these things were leisure devices? These were not serious contenders as business productivity tools? By the time the iPad came and the new wave of mobile innovative computing had took hold, many vendors had woken up and smelt the coffee. Via the back door, Apple had set a new agenda for computing. By getting executives and workers alike to buy effectively gadgets with their own money, an upsurge of revolt against the IT rules occurred in companies across the globe. IT managers wept as CEOs relented and allowed iPhones and iPads to be bought and for users to express choice and buy Apple Macs as their PCs of choice.

Apple came back into mainstream Corporate computing via the back door - from left field. And nobody saw it coming. Using the Cloud as the tether not the network, Apple totally revolutionised the way in which we bought applications and the price which we paid.
Executives not only had Macs and iPads but they had tens of small applications running on them, some business, some leisure which helped them to do what they wanted. You could now just flip open your computer and quickly dash off an email wherever you may be via the phone or WiFi network while listening to music and without all the rigmarole of linking to the home network. The Cloud made it all happen easily.

Computing has got innovative, exciting and sexy again. Luddites and Victorian minded companies like Microsoft are trying to pour scorn on these upstarts like Apple and Google. They can never challenge Microsoft on business-grade computing. People love and need Microsoft Office on their PCs, USB ports to tether to devices and strict rules governing what productivity tools they use. They need Office because that's the Corporate standard across the globe. Don't they? The Cloud is what Microsoft will define it to be and it's just a bit of extra connectivity but the good old lumpy, maxed-out PC is still the business workhorse.

The revolution has already started. The Cloud - no - the internet is the platform and it's giving people the power to do things unimaginable. All those years ago, Microsoft gave us that power to be individuals in a business world full of rules by opening up possibilities. Now it's being the matronly old lady that tells us that we cannot have fun and do business at the same time. The Cloud and companies like Google and Apple say that it's different and people - business people - agree.

Apple is back in mainstream computing. Google is on the business scene. A whole new raft of exciting new companies are innovating as if we have emerged from a computing Dark Age. The future is new and exciting and it's fun.

On the same device a 16 month old kid can have fun with a 70 year old man swiping through photos and playing the virtual drums while the same machine receives corporate email and be a mobile computer. Suddenly, the world of business and leisure has merged and laptops need not be left to whir forlornly over weekends as the family goes for a picnic. The computer gets invited along too.

The Cloud has opened up the corporate network. The next logical step is for companies to reassess their use of business productivity tools in the light of what is going on around them. The Cloud isn't for everyone but every small business in the world today will be thinking how to maximise their sales not run their IT. The Cloud gives them the freedom to do just that. Being fast moving, agile, accessible, innovative and competitive is what business is all about not being restrained by networks and rules. Using The Cloud will help small businesses be leaner and win. It helped a big company like Apple to flourish again.

It's a competitive world out there and technology is changing by the minute. Companies can now share in the freedom of making decisions about IT that are not about 3-5 year windows but 6 months or less - they can adapt to the changing world much, much quicker. They can embrace social media on the fly to maximise business, they can answer phone calls on a virtual PBX while sitting in cafe at the Station just the same as if they were in the office. The power of what can be done is no longer limited by the purchase of a server or dedicated device to do it.

Just do it.

You see, The Cloud is being made out to be some mysterious, ethereal intangible plume of vapour into which data descends and gets lost. It isn't. It's a high grade network into which companies have poured billions to make it the communication vehicle for everything from voice to data for the future. It allows us to not just do business with people everywhere and make small companies look big but has given us a voice and platform to increase our personal footprints. It has also done the same for business. It has also allowed us to share in the economy of scale of expensive hardware and software by not making us purchase the whole caboodle to do it but join others who have knowing there is plenty of capacity for us all.

The Cloud has given people and small businesses scale. Use it to make yourself bigger and pay for only what you use. The Cloud is like having a high speed train service that doesn't just stop at stations but stops at your door step or wherever you are and takes you exactly to wherever you want to go, and is cheaper than buying and using your own car and getting caught in jams.

The Cloud is not just the superhighway for the future, it is the future of computing for small businesses.

Google Apps vs Microsoft Office 365 - The End of the Story

The final twist in the saga on my trial of both Microsoft and Google came late last night.

The background is that MS Office 365 uses a SharePoint back end to store files. It assumes that you have a local version of Office because as a product that's how it is designed. So if you receive emails with attachments in MS Office 365 then the common way of storing the attached file is to upload or download the file to and from your hard disk. This seems a complicated way of doing it when normally you would just right click and save the attachment.

But it gets worse. If you want to attach a file in the SharePoint Team Site in MS Office 365, you have to email a link to that document and open that link. SharePoint allows you to share to up to 50 people outside your company. It's a senseless way for a small businessperson to work asking them to keep track of permissions.

And this is the point of what has been a trial that promised a great deal and delivered nothing. I cannot work like that. I am an SME who works at other companies' premises, at airports, at train stations, on the fly. I need products that keep me productive. I cannot be done with dipping into the administration page of my application every time I want to share something. I need an easy way of doing things. I need to have support for new, innovative devices that make my working life easier like tablets, smartphones and, yes, iPads. I need to be flexible.

Microsoft have foisted SharePoint as a back end on unsuspecting small businesspeople as the central storage area for MS Office 365 but it's an enterprise-grade project and departmental product that was devised as a Lotus Notes alternative. It's not a small business product, and it certainly is not a modern solution to the mobile executive.

I have tried very hard to see the way forward on MS Office 365 as I am at a point as an SME when I should be upgrading and I got terribly close to buying. My excellent Lenovo X200 laptop is keeling over with loads on its operating system and I daily face periods where it goes into stasis as every other PC I have ever had has done after a while - something never adequately explained to me but seems to be resolved by buying a new one and starting again. Now I would like Windows 7 not XP and Office 2010 features. To do this without MS Office 365 it would cost over £500 and or possibly a new laptop. That is not a solution - that is the usual 2-5 year upgrade plan PC and MS users have. Those days are t be ended by The Cloud as it's an unaffordable future and there are alternatives.

To go MS Office 365 and solve the problem that way means locking myself into a new method of working which is counter intuitive and restrictive for an SME. Frankly, I don't think Google is a better solution as I am too fearful of isolating myself in the short term, but they have the right approach. Whatever your device is, it's part of the set up.

The Cloud offers so much and in the key area of office productivity it is failing to deliver. Obstinacy and lack of innovation at Microsoft is killing the opportunity as they fail to engage with modern devices for fearing revenue drops while Google are full of their 'change the world' attitude which narrowly misses the point.

Whether we or Google like it or not, the majority of office users are Microsoft based. Google needs to embrace this and give sound alternatives. It is close to doing so but not close enough. Microsoft just seems in total inertia and denial. The Cloud and mobile computing will be what they say it is and that's that. Resellers will lump what they have as a market opportunity or get stuffed.

I have said it before. There is an opportunity for a company to come from left field and re-invent office productivity with the modern world in mind. That company may not be the owner of the operating system and it may not even be visible yet.

But it would be depressing to think this is as good as it gets. The Cloud promises much, much more. Someone embrace and give us what we need. Right now, I cannot afford to change.

Keep Taking the Tablets, Boys

This whole tablet thing isn't happening. It won't take off not in the way it actually has done already. It will be the way we design it to be. The market will stop, retrench and come back to our way of thinking. I have my fingers in my ears and I'm saying 'La la la la'. I can't hear you, Mr Tablet Market.

That's the Microsoft way, according to Andy Lees, MS Windows Phone President, who said as much at this week's WPC event in Los Angeles. In doing so Microsoft has banned its OEM Partners from using the Windows Phone operating system as the operating system for tablets.
OK, let's recap the story so far. By June of this year, Apple had sold approximately 25 million iPads, and that rate of growth in sales is accelerating with 6 million sold in the 3 months between March and June. In total between smartphones and tablets around 394 million have been sold versus a global PC population of 1.3 billion and a global mobile subscriber base of 5.1 billion.

Something has changed. Knock, knock Microsoft. Hello, is there anyone at home?

By 2014 it is estimated that there will be more than 400 million tablets sold globally at a rate of 185 million a year by then. It is thought that not Apple but Google's Android operating system (OS) will be the choice of over 40% of those tablet vendors and will be the biggest market share. It is estimated that Microsoft will have less than 13% of the tablet OS market, Blackberry falling to just 5%.

Why is it important to treat these devices as mobile smartphone type devices and not PCs? Don't we want to use them for business? Won't we want Microsoft Office running native on these devices?

The answer is that yes we will want them as hybrid devices as Microsoft describes them but the paradigm has changed. The web has become the platform so we don't need USB ports or adherence to corporate networks, we just need access to the web by WiFi or 3/4G. We want to use these lightweight devices to port business around like a briefcase, sharing folders in The Cloud but having local copies.

Just this morning I blogged that Microsoft Office 365 is already redundant for the iPad because it's SharePoint back end is the wrong animal for the job and it assumes bulky Office client software to be present in full on the local device. Dropbox is the obvious choice. GoToDocs allows creation, viewing and editing of MS files and PDFs and you can print them via WiFi (OK that's ropey for now but it's not rocket science to get it right). This application was downloaded in seconds from iTunes Store and cost less than a few pounds. And cost is key here - nothing in Apple's App Store costs over £30 at the last look. This is good news.

And this is the point. We don't want another device that takes an age to boot and has zillions of processes clogging up the CPU and memory. We want always-on, reasonably priced innovative applications that allow mobile working to be not just effective but affordable. We don't want over-priced, resource-hogging, out-moded operating systems hammering the performance. We want machines with high performance graphics that we can use as a business-grade engine AND as a recreation device - that lasts full day in battery and doesn't weigh a ton.

The tablet market is one of the most exciting things to emerge in the industry for a decade and products like Evernote lead the way in terms of usable business software. A superb MS OneNote alternative constantly synchronises the notes you make on all devices via the Cloud - and it's free. Why do you want vast local storage with that power at your fingertips?

At last the world of computing has wrestled free of Microsoft's grip. And it's fast moving and it's exciting again. This weekend Google Plus will attain 20 million users in just a short period of time - that pulling power is distorting our way of thinking and users like the way it's going. The web is making the world of computing available to any device and it's capturing our imagination.
Microsoft has to change. It is fast becoming a dinosaur and there is a feel of the IBM of the 80s about the management talk as they adhere to only things they know and want to hear. They talk only in the product set they have and cannot seem to innovate new things to tackle the companies stealing their market.

With the European PC market dropping by over 17% this year, the writing is on the wall as the tablet market grows into the space left behind. The world has changed already and Steve Ballmer, Lees and others at the top are standing Canute-like as the 'Sea of Progress' inevitably washes over them.

The problem is that Microsoft's numbers don't reflect it yet. And that IBM feeling comes back once again. The bolt from the blue - the one no one saw coming - has already struck but it hasn't manifested itself in the numbers as yet. The tablet market is established and the main player is not Microsoft - that has got to hurt.

Where a potential 13% of the tablet market leaves MS OS and Office is anyone's guess but with a potential 40% of it, Google would be rather hopeful that they may have a greater say than anyone else with Apple standing beside them.

You could not have predicted this just two years ago. Bill Gates once wrote a book, 'Business at the Speed of Thought'. Well it seemed someone stopped thinking in his company. And Steve Ballmer is reputed to have once fielded questions from an audience where he started by saying, 'Microsoft is right. Now what was the question?'

That about says it all.

Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office 365 - The Trial

A while back I decided to test this whole Cloud thing and trial Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. I have blogged that I was disappointed with some aspects of MS 365, well here's the results on Google Apps.

To set the scene I am a long term MS Office 2007 user and a small business who has a hosted Exchange server via Fasthosts. It's a good set up but it's actually an expensive set up - having cost me £350 or so to buy Office 2007 five years ago and then £90 a year for my hosted Exchange.

So Google Apps on paper has an attraction as for my size business it's free and at most $50/user/year. With this in mind, I set about setting it up to mimic my domain. The beauty of Cloud computing is that it is meant to take away the dirge and hard work of IT and let you focus on your business. Not as such, Mr. Google.

Google Apps has copious amounts of helpful written information which guides you through setting up the trial to effectively squat on your domain, mine being Calxeurope.com. This means it can effectively send and receive emails from there so that you can trial it properly. Microsoft set you up a dummy site which is very easy and useful. Google try to get too clever and by the time I read that I have to set up an Active Directory Object for each trial user I started to get frightened - and bored.

I spent hours looking in the Fasthosts Control Panel and then calling them to ask about this. After much angst, it was decided that as a hosted user, I did not have they rights to do so. The trial stopped in its tracks. Sort of.

So I decided to set it up anyway, going as far as it would allow me. Gmail is easy and I set up a new user in my domain with a slightly different email alias. From there I tried to enable Google Apps. The most bizarre thing happened. The Apps tried to load then jumped back to the set up screen, tried to load, jumped back etc. It did this without my intervention and would have continued ad infinitum unless I stepped in and stopped it which I did. Repeating the process it did the same thing for Calendar. I stepped back and tried it all again. Eventually it worked,
I sent email to myself, tried to upload files which worked although it confusingly asks you if you want to change format. But uploading folders failed with some error to do with Java. Things seemed to be OK beyond this. My uploaded spreadsheet opens with two pages, one is a large view of the title tab, the other is the subsequent sheet. How strange. It does the same for multiple sheets. But at least the content was OK. Creating your own docs is easy.

However, annoyingly, every time you click on something new a new window opens. Pretty soon you have multiple windows open and you lose your place. Badly. In fact, it's really daft. In Gmail, instead of organising mails, threads appear which you need to get used to but are good. Searching mail is understandably simpler from a web search company but it works. Then there are the adverts. Of course, I am a freebie user and the notion is that if it's free someone has to make money out of you so you are sent adverts.

That winds me up. If you are going to give something away, then do so in good grace and make sure they have the best view of what you are selling. Trust that it has a viral effect and that my experience will drive me to pay the fees required. Don't bombard me with adverts. This makes Microsoft the BBC of the business. No ads on their trial. I hate this new idea that free means money.

Then there is the 'Internet Explorer Compatibility' guff. Google sense I don't use Chrome so it tries to convert me with no reason as to why. So I don't. There that showed them. But wait a minute. I am in Gmail - now where is the link to Google Apps? There are buttons for Contacts and Tasks but where have my Apps gone?

There they are up top left a wispy menu I hardly noticed when I looked for them next to the Calendar and Chat. Nothing intuitive about the interface but there is a lot there. The view on my iPad is similar but I also have the GoDocs App and I haven't yet worked out how to sync my trial to this but I have used this App before and it's good but not great. Go To Docs is better for Microsoft users by some distance.

Google Apps is decent - it gives you up to 5 users on your domain and 8Gb for free. There isn't a worry about using local apps like Office because it is all served by the web which is the bit Microsoft misses. In the end, by some mystery, I can send emails back and fore from what appears to be my domain with my added domain user but not my actual normal email alias as the trial should do.

In reality, to make Google Mail and Apps work in your domain, you need to know where to look in MS Exchange. I don't have an IT manager - that's me - and I didn't know. I wasted too long messing about with this and it didn't work. SOHO and SMEs like me will lose the will to live if this is the case and this is an issue to Google - particularly as the whole point of The Cloud is to free us up to run our businesses. And they don't want to talk toy you as that would spoil their cost model. Intervention on the web is a money sapper. If I can't do it via reading the manual, I am not worth selling to.

For me, as a long term Microsoft user, I have to say that there is safety in what I know. For £15.75/user/month I get a full version of MS Office 365 running as per my set up today plus a hosted SharePoint back end which I don't have today. There is snug feeling about this. Moving to Google, even free, would be a risky step not knowing when compatibility may isolate me - and even though it's free for my level, the potential impact to my business if it fails me on a minor issue is potentially worth far more in terms of credibility or worse than the £189/user/year price tag on Microsoft.

Google has some way to go to convince people. There are still questions about MS 365 to resolve in terms of whether my add ins will still work like Salesforce.com, Xobni, Evernote which are now key to my productivity and I am not sure who can answer them. This is the final step for Microsoft in convincing users like me at the cusp of an upgrade not to desert them and go to Google.

Price says Google. Peace of mind and familiarity means Microsoft. Both teams have issues but I would pay the £189 on MS 365 vs Google Apps simply as I don't have enough time to get to know the new features, there are no add ins to make me as productive and the risk of making myself an island of incompatibility at a crucial time is there even though I cannot quantify that risk.

Microsoft still has the winning story. But not every business user is like me. To many, free vs £189 is a no brainer particularly when Google are constantly evolving. Coaxing people from PC to web is the battleground and Google have an advantage that Microsoft underestimate. They have never been a PC application. They are a web company through and through. Microsoft is a PC based company and it has a long way to learn that they are a distant second place or worse on the web.

Google Plus is out and already they reckon 20 million users will have signed up by the weekend. Microsoft should not underestimate the growing link between Social Media and business and office productivity.

Just as people fear and moan about Microsoft's dominant position on the PC, many are concerned of the insidiousness of Google on the web. Both companies behave badly from this point of view. But they are surely the main players in the grand battle for the hearts and minds of small businesspeople.

The battle has begun. I stay in the Microsoft camp. This week I will sign up to MS Office 365 and pay £15.75 per month. I'm actually quite excited about it. How sad is that?