Cap'n Google: Blind Leading the Blind, or a New Vision for Google Apps?

It's clear despite various denials that Google is trying to target Microsoft Office with its Apps strategy, and it's clear from many early looks at Google's functionality, and terms of service, that this strategy has a long way to go before it offers a genuine challenge to the Office monopoly. And it's also clear that the recent Cap Gemini alliance is intended to bring some much needed adult supervision -- in the form of a major global systems integrator with a global presence in the office of the CEO -- to Google's fledgling efforts.

But the real question is whether the Cap'n Google alliance is enough to make a real difference, or is it just another press release in a long list of press releases about the major search engines (Google and Yahoo) and their so far in vain attempts to make a difference as enterprise players, in partnership with the likes of SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce.com? My vote is with the latter.

Why the negatory view (other than it seems to be a habit gleaned over 20-plus years of hearing about major alliances that never amount to anything)? Global SI's like Cap have a great track record in many things, but "packaged" enterprise software ain't one of them. Now, I know that Google Apps isn't packaged per se, but it is a "packaged" product as opposed to what companies like Cap are really best at, which is building custom applications as part of very complex and expensive consulting projects. And, while Cap can possibly help Google get through some of the early potty-training phases of its assault on the enterprise and Microsoft Office, a global SI isn't going to be the best channel for a totally self-service, standalone application. Biggest reason: there's simply not enough consulting moolah in Google Apps to get Cap really focused on making this deal a truly big deal.

The big SIs have made revolutions in packaged software happen before, precisely because there was a huge consulting upside to every engagement. The most notable example of this was the birth of SAP R/3 in 1991, which coincided with the business process re-engineering craze and the advent of client/server. Putting all three of them together guaranteed consulting fees that put many an SI on easy street. But the ratios of consulting to license software was on the order of 10:1, and that based on license fees of $10 million on up.

At $50/user/year, Google's enterprise Apps edition, which is the one that Cap is now flogging for them, can't really dare amount to a whole lot of consulting moolah without breaking the Google's almost free" model pretty definitively. Even if you had a ten thousand user installation, and a consulting ration of two dollars of consulting for every one dollar of license (a rough average in today's less profligate times), Cap's possible bill would be a pretty wimpy $1 million. Nothing to sneeze at for some, but it's more the size deal that a boutique SI goes for, not the big game that gets the Caps of this world up and at 'em every morning.

So it's not clear to me how this deal really changes the game for Microsoft, or for Google either. One thing that will happen for sure is that Cap's sales force will be reporting back to Google, with considerable authority, on how inadequate Google Apps are for the needs of major enterprises. That infusion of practical knowledge will be highly useful to Google, and may represent a great way for Google to figure its way into the executive suite. But those pathways -- external sales channel to internal R&D -- are generally not as effective as many would think. It's hard enough to get input from an internal consultancy into product R&D, much less from a third party.

So, while I think Cap'n Google is a good start -- and much better than a poke in the eye, as they say -- it's far from a game changing event for anyone, from Microsoft to Cap to Google. Baby steps are sometimes what it takes to learn how to walk, and chances are Google will figure out how to be a big enterprise-class applications provider someday. But it will take more than Cap Gemini to make that happen.