Microsoft Office vs Google Apps – differing strategies
A useful summary from Tim Anderson of the differing strategies of Microsoft and Google in the email/document space. If I knew the winner, I’d place my bet in the stock market… but the collaborative power of Google Apps and the functional maturity of MS Office mean that both are compelling and neither is likely to beat out the other for some years.
Microsoft is pursuing its “software plus services” strategy, which means desktop applications still play an important role. The email is Exchange-based, so you can use other email clients, but only Outlook on Windows will deliver full features. Document collaboration is based primarily on cloud storage rather then editing, though when Office Web Apps appear next year users will have some lightweight editing tools.
Google on the other hand is primarily web based, with desktop support as an add-on. Google has the lead when it comes to online document editing, since it has had Google Docs for some time, whereas Office Web Apps are still in beta. Google has no bias towards Windows and Office. With Google, a document’s primary existence is in the cloud, although you can export and import with possible loss of data or formatting.
Something else I noticed is that Google has big plans for integration with mobile devices, whereas Microsoft seems mainly concerned with Exchange synchronisation.
Microsoft’s pitch is that if you live in Windows anyway, with Exchange and SharePoint on the server, and Windows and Office on the client, then its cloud service integrates nicely. Google on the other hand is more revolutionary, not caring about what you run as long as you can connect to its services.
Although the software plus services idea has attractions, it sounds more like a transitional strategy than one for the long term. Over time, as the web platform gets more powerful, and as rich internet applications take over from pure desktop applications, the services part will grow absolutely dominant.
Apple’s cantilevered beauty
More effortless than computing… but such a beautiful example of a true cantilevered staircase, in Apple’s new store in New York:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattbuchanan/4098990406/in/set-72157622666078981/
The best isn’t good enough for Steve Jobs
The difference between me and Steve is that I’m willing to live with the best the world can provide. With Steve that’s not always good enough.
More applause from the tech elite on Steve Jobs winning Fortune’s “CEO of the decade”.
A much better mouse
If you have a Mac, get Apple’s new Magic Mouse. It’s worth the £55.
Why? It’s a trackpad and mouse in one. You can move, scroll, zoom and more with almost effortless ease. Very simple, very effective – within minutes I forgot I was using a completely new tool.
Microsoft tilts at Apple by selling PCs with support service?
The Microsoft Store (US only) has started selling desktops and laptops direct to consumers – with “90 days of Microsoft Support Services included”. If MS provides phone support for the complete package of hardware, software and online services, this could finally be the IT support solution for home users – and will offer competition to Apple’s integrated hardware, software and support offering. Since Apple makes the hardware and much of your key software it can – and does – provide a great telephone-based or in-store support service. Result: happy Apple customers.
Currently, Windows home users get their hardware support from, say, Dell; their internet support from the ISP, or not…; their software support from… er… google or friends. The providers are fragmented so the support is poor – fingerpointing, lack of visibility and control of other parts of the system, etc.
So you get an IT support company to front it all up. Geek Squad offers a menu of fixed-price jobs or a fixed-price limited support service (eg excludes £99 site visits). But that ends up expensive and its interests aren’t aligned with the customer’s. Only by including all support, including on-site, for a fixed price is the provider incentivised to reduce problems rather than making money by fixing more of them.
That’s what we do at Conosco: our fixed-price all-inclusive IT support service covers remote and on-site support, covers hardware, software, internet connections, online services, the whole caboodle. The fixed pricing incentivises us to reduce problems, which is what the customer really wants.
The problem is it’s designed for businesses with five or more users – below that the account management costs don’t work and one side tends to feel it’s getting the wrong end of the fixed price deal. But if you don’t provide a personal account-managed service, the quality of service is rubbish – the customer has to repeat their situation each time they call, etc.
So there’s a huge hole in the market for high quality IT support for home users that aligns everyone’s interests.
Even if MS supports only its own software and services and fronts the hardware support, it has sufficient applications for most users’ needs. And supporting an entire system, especially if you made most of it, allows you to provide a great service.
So what will MS charge after 90 days and how? With control of the OS, software and services, it is in a powerful position to offer high-quality integrated support. Just like Apple does…
Fake Steve skewers the Borg
Fake Steve does a sharp analysis of Microsoft’s fading “copycat business model”
How did Microsoft find itself a leader in nothing and playing catch-up on every front?… They put so much effort into lost causes like search… they keep missing out on new things… Larry’s like, Look, the Borg has never been out ahead on anything. The difference is, they used to be able to catch up. They’ve always been copiers. That’s been their business model from the start. Let others go out and create a market, then copy what they’ve done, sell it for less, and crush them…
What happened?… the Borg got slower. They got big and fat and bureaucratic… everyone else got faster. Another difference was the customer set… on the Web things changed — now you were selling to consumers, and the Borg had no way to coerce or control consumers the way they could coerce corporate accounts.
So what happens next?… Do not be surprised if they find a way to get into services, and build a business around milking their installed base. They’ll call it a cloud business, but really it will mean either building data centers and renting out cycles, or just running customer data centers for them.
Do read the whole piece – it’s full of waspishly acute observations.
Mac laptops more expensive than Windows? Think again
UPDATED 20 Oct 09 for the new MacBook: 20% cheaper than comparable Dell – see bottom
Apple’s bumper latest profits are being explained partly by the old saw that Macs are expensive. Old assumptions are worth kicking and this one is not true, at least for laptops: a Mac is up to 18% cheaper on a like-for-like comparison.
Let’s compare a business-spec Mac laptop with a Windows one. We’ll include Exchange support, as it’s the dominant email & calendaring system of choice for most businesses, but also look at the cost for a Google Apps user.
My starting point is my own business laptop: a 13″ MacBook Pro. For comparison, the 13.3″ Dell Latitude E4300. I’m giving Windows the benefit here – Dells aren’t as well made as Macs but they’re good enough.
I chose the faster 2.53GHz processor for each, to get an exact match. To match the high specs of the MacBook Pro, I had to add many of the Dell’s optional extras (Dell specialise in low headline prices for barebones configurations): MS Office Small Business (£179), screen camera, 4GB RAM, 250GB 5200rpm hard drive, larger battery, backlit keyboard and Bluetooth. To match the Mac’s lack of antivirus, I downgraded Dell’s to a 30 day trial.
The warranty and support options are difficult to match. Dell includes a 3 year next business day warranty service that is sufficient if you also have an IT support company on hand – Dell’s telephone support is notoriously ‘offshore’. Apple includes only a one year warranty by default so you really need to pay another £170 for AppleCare – but you then get a very high quality telephone support service as well as a 3 year warranty. To keep things equal, I upgraded Dell’s support to ProSupport (+£112) to match the quality of AppleCare and added the latter to the Mac. To match Office, I added iWork (£47) to the Mac.
The prices for the key options are (£ excluding VAT, including delivery):
| Option | Dell E4300 | MacBook Pro |
| Exchange & Office apps, full support | 1,486 | 1,216 |
| Exchange & Office apps, 3 yr warranty | 1,374 | 1,216 |
| Google Apps users, 3yr warranty | 1,195 | 1,169 |
If you are an Exchange and Office user with an IT department, the Mac is £158 cheaper. If you need full telephone support, the Mac is £270 less – 18%. These gaps are partly because Macs now have Exchange support built in so you can use the much cheaper iWork for editing documents, whilst Windows users still have to buy MS Office to get Outlook.
However if you moved to web-based services such as Google Apps and drop Office / iWork, the gap narrows to just £26 in favour of the Mac. But as a bonus, this Mac price also includes better telephone support and build quality (aluminium casing, etc).
Is that the end of Macs being more expensive than Windows? No – if you’re on a tight budget you can get a low-spec Windows laptop far cheaper than the most basic MacBook. But if you’re comparing like for like, a Mac laptop is cheaper.
UPDATE for the new MacBook released 20 Oct 09:
The new MacBook has a better LED screen, more power, a 7 hour battery and the fabulous multi-touch trackpad. It’s still in a plastic body, but it looks more than suitable for a frugal business. The closest Dell Latitude to this is the E4300 with the 2.4GHz processor; although slightly more than this MacBook’s 2.26GHz, it’s near enough. The Dell, configured to match, costs £1,103 (net); the MacBook with superior warranty and support costs £864 – more than 20% cheaper. If you need Exchange support, the gap could double.
Can this be right? I’ve had to add luxuries such as a camera, backlit keyboard, Bluetooth and larger battery to the Dell to match the typically well-spec’d Mac; removing these saves £94. The Mac is still much cheaper (and you get the incomparable multi-touch trackpad).
Go Google poster spoof
Google launched a major poster campaign in the UK today – here’s the spoof:
Google Wave: unifying two ancient forms of communication
Humans have always had two main forms of communication – synchronous and asynchronous. Not very romantic categories, but they encompass everything. Synchronous is a real-time exchange and includes speech, telegraph, telephone, instant messenger, video conferencing. Asynchronous is delayed or one-way and includes painting, writing, email, the web. SMS and Twitter get close to blending the two, but only by being flexible enough to behave in both ways.
Now we have a true blend of these two ancient forms of communication: Google Wave. For instance you can read an email and start an instant messenger conversation around a particular point in it.
This is rather like an art historian standing in front of an old painting, explaining what the god signified and why he was doing something to the nymph. Except it’s happening in everyday desktop communications.
If Wave works – and we’ll know soon, as soon as enough people are using it – it could well be a ‘moment’ in communications.
