3 Google Enterprise Trends in 2012
Posted on Mon, Jan 23, 2012
As a Google Enterprise Partner, we routinely engage with large customers in connection with their messaging and collaboration strategy. While the primary driver behind enterprise adoption of Google Apps has been the licensing of Gmail, recently we have seen several trends including a growing wave of interest in the collaboration aspects of Google Apps including chat, Google+ hangouts, and other features.
Here is our take on 3 of those trends for 2012:
Collaboration as the Centerpiece
While email remains a crucial communication medium, the increased power of cloud based solutions is diminishing the role of email in work place collaboration. For example, Maven Wave is deploying Google Apps in a 1,000 user environment where the customer is not replacing Exchange. Rather, they are looking at the power of collaboration using Docs, Sites, Chat, and Hang-Outs as a compelling business case for their user community. Collaborating in real-time on the same document means everyone can see, adjust, and agree to the wording and graphics in real time at the moment the document changes. This type of time saving work just isn’t possible with other collaboration frameworks.
Sites for Engagement
Collecting and compiling form based data quickly and easily, has been a stumbling block for business users since the dawn of technology. Of course IT can build an application to serve this need, but the power of Google Sites and Docs makes it so simple that literally anyone can do it. We have a customer in the real estate management space who is very interested in the power of coupling Sites with Docs; where a simple spreadsheet can quickly become a form, and emailed to anyone to solicit feedback that is dropped directly into the spreadsheet. If email isn't the preferred way to collect that input, then it can just as quickly become a website for people to fill out. Because the contributor's email address and date/time stamp may also be applied, this approach can greatly facilitate quarterly audit processes, in which property managers are obliged to confirm they have inspected the site for one or another compliance purpose.
Google+ for Enthusiasm
The increasingly younger, more tech saavy business user expects corporate computing to be as easy as Facebook to use and collaborate with others. Baking social media into the corporate computing experience is a rapidly emerging trend. Google+ offers companies a way to harness that collaborative and collective energy within the four-walls of their organization--bringing to work-topics, the look and feel of collaboration that fits comfortably with their Facebook experience. Where a 90's era IT manager would have simply prevented the interaction through firewall rules, today's savvy IT staff are duplicating the framework in order to harness for the corporation the interactive impulse already there to be leveraged.
We realize and believe there are many trends taking place in this space right now. The above three are just some immediate examples of what we’re seeing today.
We’d love to hear back from you about the trends you’re seeing with cloud services in enterprise or with Google Apps specifically. Thanks!