---
title: "Google Apps Goes After Enterprise Market – “Team Productivity” The Catchphrase"
date: 2007-09-09
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# Google Apps Goes After Enterprise Market – “Team Productivity” The Catchphrase

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20110104134549im_/http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/images/googleapps_feb07.gif)UK newspaper The Guardian is [reporting](https://web.archive.org/web/20110104134549/http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/10/google?gusrc=rss&feed=technology) that Google has partnered with major IT consultancy and outsourcing specialist CapGemini, to sell Google Apps to enterprises. CapGemini, which is also a partner of Microsoft and IBM, will keep the $50 per user fee that Google charges for Google Apps Premier Edition. They will also make money off services. CapGemini currently manages about a million desktops for corporate clients.

Interestingly, CapGemini’s strategy is to “mix and match” Microsoft and Google office products – so it seems Google Apps will be a complement, moreso than a replacement, for Microsoft Office. Google too seems to be pushing the complement line. Robert Whiteside, Google enterprise manager for UK and Ireland, is quoted as saying: “If you look at the traditional desktop it is very focused on personal productivity. What Google Apps brings is team productivity.”

Nick Carr has some [more info](https://web.archive.org/web/20110104134549/http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/capgemini_to_pi.php) on this news. He spoke to Steve Jones, a Capgemini outsourcing executive, who told Carr there were two main advantages of Google Apps:

> “First, it allows the many thousands of workers who don’t have their own PCs or their own copies of Office – from factory hands to call-center agents – to gain access to email, calendars, and other personal-productivity applications. Up to now, says Jones, licensing and data-storage costs have prohibited these “disenfranchised employees” from being given access to Office-style apps. Because Google charges only $50 a year per user for Apps and stores all email messages and other data in its own systems, it lowers the cost barrier substantially.
> 
> Second, says Jones, Google Apps simplifies collaboration, particularly between employees working at different companies \[…\]”

This is an interesting move by Google – not so much the outsourcing to CapGemini, because that is a common and almost necessary way to crack the enterprise market. Of more interest to me is how Google is positioning Google Apps as a complement to Microsoft Office. It’s almost admitting that Google Apps *isn’t* good enough to be a standalone office suite yet. And to be frank, they are right – it isn’t. So for now, riding into the enterprise on the coattails of the big kahunas (MS Office and to a lesser extent IBM) is a pretty cunning strategy.

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_apps_goes_after_enterprise_market_capgemini.php))*