Google Apps finds Microsoft Office friend
A fiscal drama is unfolding in the city, "Midland school outsourcing decision nears."
OurMidland reports:
Midland Public Schools needs to reduce next year’s budget by at least $5 million. The Midland City Educational Support Personnel Association union is fighting to keep good jobs for its members. Finding a place in the middle for the two sides could be difficult.
The Midland Grace A. Dow Memorial Library, for its part, has already made an outsourcing decision, and its Executive Director, Melissa Barnard, is touting it, as also reported by OurMidland, "Library promoting Google Docs for use on computers":
Google has now offered a free, web-based service that has word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, and you can actually save and then open your documents," Barnard said. "We hope that by offering that service we'll meet the needs of our patrons.
Barnard's "promotion" of Google Apps would be music to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's "we're not competing with Microsoft Office" ears:
Barnard said Google Docs is compatible with Microsoft Office documents.
Schmidt is apparently getting his "we can all get along in the cloud" PR pitch out. Why then isn't his own Google Apps staff on board with the ecumenical cloud?
In Google displaces Microsoft, already, I note Kevin Gough, product manager, Google Enterprise, touting "Google Apps replaced Microsoft Office at 100,000 businesses."
In Google Enterprise strategy: ‘Death to the hierarchy’ I present the Google Enterprise field sales pitch, it is an anti-Microsoft Office one:
Google is not simply making an enterprise case for why Google applications in the cloud are better then Microsoft applications on the desktop. Google is on an all-out enterprise mission to displace the Microsoft folder dynasty with the Google search box.
When Michael Lock, Director of North American Sales for Google Enterprise, made the Google Enterprise case to NYC technology buyers at Google NYC headquarters last fall, he declared "Death to the (Microsoft) hierarchy."
I asked Lock for a projection of when Google will succeed in bringing “Death to the hierarchy,” but no specific date for an absolute demise was provided. Why Not?
Perhaps because:Google vs. Microsoft Office? Not yet! and Google vs. Microsoft Office? Yay! Google Spreadsheets gets charts.
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