In last night’s IS 6100 lecture, I mentioned Google Apps. This is a free web-based application suite that offers email, calendar, contacts, word processing and spreadsheet functions. No software installation is required, other than a Web browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer.
According to this Yahoo article and this Google site, Google will offer a business version of this suite for US$50 per seat per year. This version includes customization, support for specific domain names in e-mail addresses, and 10 GB of hosted storage per seat.
Google is aiming squarely at Microsoft Office, which is a major cash cow for Microsoft. Businesses that don’t need a full office suite on every employee’s hard drive can save money by using Google’s web-based apps. Google updates its software on its own servers, as it is operating as an application service provider (ASP), so Microsoft Update isn’t needed to patch the apps.
Google also offers an education version for universities. A university like HPU could offer students Gmail with an hpu.edu e-mail address. Google Apps allows users to share and edit DOC and XLS files, which would be very handy for group projects.
Finally, there are various free office suites available, including OpenOffice. Some of these require installation to a hard drive. I prefer web-based solutions, even when they don’t support PowerPoint files.
Tags: ASP, Google, Microsoft, mobile, office, PPT, software, university
