Google battles Microsoft

I heard the Google Enterprise troops last week at the NYC Googleplex gear up for intensified battle against Microsoft with the cry of “Death to the hierarchy,” the Microsoft folder hierarchy, as I report and analyze in "Google Enterprise strategy: ‘Death to the hierarchy’" and "Google to Microsoft Office: Search box trumps folders." 

Google is readying its Enterprise, or “premium,” version of Google Apps for Your Domain for a 2007 Q1 rollout and is pitching its “massively scalable, cheap infrastructure” to thousands of executives around the world from corporate, government and not-for-profit organizations.

I joined about 200 NYC technology buyers at Google's new NYC headquarters last Tuesday at a breakfast hosted by Michael Lock, Director of North American Sales for Google Enterprise.

Lock is on a mission to evangelize the Google search paradigm and bring it into the enterprise, while displacing Microsoft applications.

Lock engaged the enterprise crowd with road warrior tales of how, thanks to GMail, he is no longer stuck spending hours of unproductive time categorizing emails into folders, Microsoft Outlook folders.

In proclaiming “you don’t put email in folders” and declaring GMail the victor over Outlook, Lock put forth the Google Enterprise strategy of “Death to the hierarchy,” the hierarchical Microsoft Office folder information structure. Lock asserted an enterprise superiority of the Google search paradigm; Implicit organization via a single, intuitive search box.

Google is spreading its “collaboration revolution” gospel throughout the business world and claiming that Google search “will become the central information access point in the enterprise.”

Google’s enterprise message puts forth the same Googley goodness people “have come to expect” from Google.com. Google's enterprise innovations:

can make your job easier, make your employees happier and more productive, and simplify the life of your entire IT department.

How will the premium version of Google Apps bring Google “collaboration” magic to the enterprise? Lock put forth two key ways Google intends to trump Microsoft:

Not overburdened with features,
Significantly lower cost of ownership.

As the top sales person for Google in the enterprise, Lock is banking big on a big Google cost advantage of its hosted productivity solutions.

Although pricing for the premium version of Google Apps has not yet been announced, Lock assured that Google intends to aggressively drive down the “price per document” of its enterprise solutions. Lock suggested the days of spending “$300 to $1000 yearly for an email box” are numbered.

Lock leads a 250 person strong cross-functional Google Enterprise team. All are dedicated to bringing “Death to the hierarchy,” by convincing organizations around the world that the “old (Microsoft) methods of information management don’t work.”

What works in a forward thinking enterprise?

Collaboration 'hosted by Google'

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