Beautiful example on why Google is not about enterprise and cloud mail!

Google made a great example on why the company should stick to making the world best search engine online; the credit they deserve.

But they should stay away from corporate business application; why? Read the resent Migration Whitepaper and pay attention to details within the paper – http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//support/enterprise/static/gapps/docs/admin/en/gapps_exchange_migration/1.0/gamme_admin.pdf;

• On the pages 23-25 the list pretty much shows you what cannot be migrated, instead of what can and should be migrated.
• Being on the subject of what should; let us look more on the details again.
  • Public folders are a nay. Why? Google doesn’t support it; so enterprise sharing of e-mail lists and e-mails, incoming group mailboxes are in the Google world supposed to be the “docs place”. For you corporate junkies with 728 applications installed – you just got another app to manage and explore –and no; Google Docs does not support multiple group boxes.
  • Messages larger than 25 Mb. Cause? Read the whitepaper; Google simply does not work with big emails. Are you a layer, architecture, engineer or simply just an e-mail lover; split up all your e-mail and increase the items of your inbox, rather than at simple overview and a mail on your desired size. And DON’T comment on the term; “you don’t need big e-mails”. It’s 2010; I as a consumer and user specify what I need, not the vendor… it’s a new game play. And yes; migrating to Google will make some (you won’t get told which) e-mail disappear.
  • Executables in compressed files. Hmmm… Google does constrain on content; not on location of it.
  • Importance levels. Yes I also hate Jimmy from finance as all his e-mail are VERY IMPORTANT. But, sometimes when a n angry customer needs to confront the reality and make his voice heard (try e-mailing Google Support for instance), importance will put focus on the reader. Global Research Group makes clear in the 2008 report on e-mail usage; that 44% of all users use importance marks. Google, please recap.
  • Category definitions? COME ON!! If you are a heavy user of e-mail (corporate customer), you probably filter and leverage these categories all the time to make the day more easy and flux. Xobni quoted to hate the features of Outlook; as they would love to have made it available.
  •  Calendar attachments. Fair enough, can’t seem to find a reason for it. But again… I had the opportunity before (never go down of past…)
  • Follow-up, flags and reminder. Again not support; so migrating away just made all Personal Assistants (PA’s), secretaries or Information Worker more stressed or worried.

I love a lot of Google applications. I believe the company is the most vigilant and innovative vendor to date;  but I had expected Google to present a more corporate solution than a SOHO wanna-be e-mail platform. Migrating to Google from Exchange is simply a mistake; price does not compare and features are less understandable. Stick to Exchange, let Google innovate on the other GREAT apps.

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Battle of the ISVs

Google just recently announced they are launching a new development language GO, to capture ISV’s towards their development platforms. C, C++ have been around forever and of cause GO use some basic implementations of C or C++ but does it make any sense at all to launch new development languages? When Oracle announced to support Microsoft based infrastructure, they did are marvelous job in increasing sales and customer adoption of Oracle databases. Reality is not to change behaviour and comfort zone, but to distinguish and differentiate upon already selected technologies.

For long I have stated that Google would launch support for .NET framework development against their development platform. Now I may be wrong, but if that is the case, I would state that Google will lose the development/platform battle of ISV’s.