Google Apps upgrade threatens Office
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(InfoWorld) - Google is pushing further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office. On Thursday, Google will introduce a Google Apps version that, for a fee, offers guaranteed uptime, IT management tools, technical support, increased e-mail storage, andÂ integration with the Docs & SpreadsheetsÂ word processing and spreadsheet applications, as well as BlackBerry support for Gmail. With a cost $50 per user per year, Google Apps Premier Edition becomes the third and most sophisticated version of the suite, which was launched in August with the free Standard Edition and Education Edition versions. Like the original editions, Premier will have services like Gmail Web mail, Calendar shared scheduling, and Talk instant messaging. The suite was until today called Google Apps for Your Domain, because organizations offer these Google hosted services using their own Internet domain and branding. The Standard edition is used by over 100,000 small businesses, and the Education edition by hundreds of universities. SF Bay Pediatrics, which has two medical offices in the San Francisco area, implemented the Premier edition in January for most of its 25 employees, which until then had used individual e-mail accounts from providers like AOL. "We had no control over e-mail, and supporting it was a nightmare," said Andrew Johnson, the company's chief information officer. With Gmail, the performance and management e-mail problems disappeared, he said. While SF Bay Pediatrics employees use Microsoft's Office suite, they also use Docs & Spreadsheets to store their files on a central server and collaborate on them, Johnson said. "I don't see us going fully software-as-a-service yet, but maybe in the future," he said. Indeed, Google Apps represents a new, hosted approach for productivity suites, a market ruled by Office, which is mostly desktop software. Despite security and privacy concerns over storing applications and data on a third-party datacenter, organizations are increasingly adopting hosted models, because the vendor stores applications on its own datacenter and thus frees IT departments from spending time and money on hardware and software maintenance. Forrester ResearchÂ isn't telling enterprises to drop Office, but it is recommending that CIOs give Google Apps a serious look, in large measure because Office's price is high, said analyst Erica Driver. Today, Google Apps is a cheaper alternative to the core Office applications, but eventually it could be a replacement option, as Google grows its capabilities and CIOs get more comfortable with software-as-a-service, she said. "Microsoft has a chance to respond, but this changes the game," Driver said. Microsoft says Office has steadily gained hosted service components for years, and it believes this combination with the core PC software is the right approach. Beyond native Office services,Â Office Live, with about 250,000 subscribers, offers a set of hosted services for small businesses, like Web site creation and hosting, while Office Online, with 70 million monthly unique users, offers Office online resources. "We're very committed to both [hosted] services and [PC] software," said Kirk Gregersen, director with Microsoft's Office team. On the issue of Office's price, Gregersen pointed out that Office customers have had less expensive alternatives, even free ones, for years, but that when deciding to buy Office, they have traditionally taken other factors into account beyond cost. Still, some Office users, like Prudential Preferred Properties in Chicago, feel the price sting, which for this real estate firm in Chicago is between $350 and $400 per license. "We have instances in which the Office license was more expensive than the PC it's on," said Camden Daily, Prudential's technology director. Google Apps found its way into Prudential, which has 450 employees, as the salvation for an outsourced e-mail service that constantly malfunctioned. Prudential has been using the free Standard version but Daily said that the Gmail service alone is worth the price of the Premier edition, which the company will adopt. "Everything on top of that is just a bonus," he said. Prudential will evaluate carefully how Docs & Spreadsheets compares with Excel and Word. Google acknowledges that Google Apps doesn't match the broad set of features currently in Office, which has an installed base of about 450 million users. Google Apps needs a presentation application like Office's PowerPoint, and to boost its support for offline work beyond its basic capabilities to import and export files from Docs & Spreadsheets, analysts say. Still, Microsoft must better articulate the value of Office Live, which lacks hosted versions of core Office applications like Word and Excel, said analyst Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research. With the improvements in Internet connectivity, it's natural for organizations to evaluate hosted suites like Google Apps as alternatives to packaged software like Office, she said. In a recent survey, Nucleus found that 51 percent of organizations use some on-demand applications for things like CRM (customer relationship management), project management, content management, e-commerce, and collaboration, Wettemann said. Those that sign up for Google's Premier edition will get 10GB of e-mail storage per user, compared to 2GB in the Standard edition, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee and phone support for IT administrators. It also includes APIs (application programming interfaces) to integrate the suite with business applications and data. The Standard and Education editions are also getting enhanced with the Docs & Spreadsheets integration and the BlackBerry support for Gmail. "This is a very big step forward for Google Apps," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google's enterprise unit. The company plans to add several more applications to the suite before the year is out, and theÂ JotSpot wiki serviceÂ is a likely candidate, he said. Google believes the Premier edition can be a good complement to Office, and it sees a big opportunity in organizations that haven't been able to justify the cost of offering e-mail to some employees, particularly in retail and manufacturing, he said. Google also plans to create an ecosystem of partners and developers around Google Apps. Â
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Is the desktop dead?  Microsoft can't even make its updates sexy anymore.
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By Jefferson Graham  Google is getting serious about taking on Microsoft.    Today, it introduces Google Apps Premium Edition, a software suite for companies that provides e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, word processing and spreadsheets. The cost is $50 per worker per year vs.
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Microsoft is considering giving away its basic Microsoft Works word processing and spreadsheet software, aimed at preventing a possible challenge in the space from Google. But can it do so without hurting sales of Microsoft Office?
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Microsoft says it will be a challenge to convince some consumers to buy its new version of Office.
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The notion that cheap or free Web-based word processing or spreadsheet programs could replace traditional software like Microsoft Office (MSFT) is becoming more realistic all the time. Outfits like Google (GOOG), ThinkFree, and Zoho have new and better services every day.
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Plus: More Office holes, and a major Adobe problem that affects all browsers.
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Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly assigns ownership of some files, Microsoft has confirmed, creating a potential security problem for businesses installing the new application suite.Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, was the first to notice the ownership snafu. "[Microsoft] moved to Apple's Package Maker (.pkg) installer files, good news for the enterprise, [but] unfortunately, they've created all the packages to install most all of the files with the owner set to 502."In a shop where employees run with limited privileges -- a practice very common in an enterprise -- and IT is the only user with full administrative rights, Office 2008's ownership assignment means that a user who wasn't supposed to have complete control over those files actually does. In other words, whomever is assigned user ID 502 has full read/write access to Office's files."So let's say, Mr. IT installs this on a user's machine where the first user is the admin[istrator] (501) and the standard user is Joe User (502)," said Bruner in a post to his blog on Monday. "Well, when after all's installed, it will give Joe User (502) ownership of these folders and their installed contents:/Library/Automator/ (if it doesn't exist already) /Library/Fonts/Microsoft /Library/Application Support/Microsoft /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008"The screw-up could present a corporate security problem, at least internally, said Bruner, if that Mac's second, standard user -- user 502 -- decides to make changes to the folders and files by, say, deleting some or moving others.A Microsoft developer left a comment at Bruner's blog confirming that the company knows about the problem. "The MacBU (Mac Business Unit) is aware of this issue," said Erik Schwiebert, a software design lead in the group.Microsoft, however, did not immediately respond to queries about how it intends to correct the problem and what users can do in the meantime.Other commenters at Bruner's blog hesitated to blame only Microsoft, however. "The truth is that this is a long-standing flaw in Apple's Installer," argued someone identified as Not Required. "Maybe Microsoft should have known better, but maybe Apple should also have improved their installer years ago. Apple clearly hasn't cared enough about smaller developers to make a fix, so hopefully Microsoft has a high enough profile that something finally gets done."In a follow-up post also on Monday, Bruner added that all the Office for Mac 2008 files owned by user 502 are also erroneously set as executable. "Now tell me does '/Microsoft Office 2008/Read Me.html' need to be executable for you to look at it?" asked Bruner. "Tick, tick, tick, *ding*! No. It does not."
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Company first released update last fall, but is issuing it again to stress to users that they could be at risk if they don't follow through.
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The latest version of Microsoft office for Macs incorrectly assigns ownership of some of its files when it's installed, causing a potential security problem for companies that are using the business suite.
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The newest version of Microsoft Office arrives this week, complete with a tricked-out user interface intended to impress the Windows-weary. By Scott Gilbertson. Plus: Gallery: Office 2007.
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The delivery of the presentations application will no doubt once again turn up the heat on industry discussions that Google Docs and Google Apps rival Microsoft's Office suite of productivity applications and the Outlook/Exchange messaging platform.
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Some say Win XP SP2 enhancements cause conflicts, don't protect as claimed.
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Zero-day spectre haunts spreadsheets Microsoft has warned of an unpatched vulnerability in its Office productivity suite.â¦
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Google will make the software programs available offline, in a move that will challenge Microsoft and its office productivity tools.
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Users and admins who have been avoiding Microsoft's upgrade from version 6 to version 7 of Internet Explorer are going to have to try a little harder: The long-expected automatic upgrade is due to push out on Feb. 12.
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An update to Office 2008 will address glitches in the installation process, Microsoft says.