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• CIO Insights

By Ina Fried, 4 March 2009 15:36

NEWS

Â…halo effect for their brand for their business offerings."

But, according to Capossela, the actual business adoption of Google's productivity software has been low. "I think the reality is Google isn't an enterprise company. Microsoft wasn't an enterprise company a long time ago and it took us years to earn the credibility."

Capossela pointed to the fact that many of Google's products, even the ones it sells to businesses are still in beta form.

"Businesses don't bet on beta," he said. "Google has been in beta for their stuff for I don't know how long...Companies have a very hard time paying for software that says it's in beta."

But customers, he said, do see web-based productivity software as a way to expand the number of workers who get access to software. That's particularly true in industries like manufacturing and hospitality, where many employees don't have their own PC.

"Certain industries lend themselves much more to a lightweight, deskless [approach]," he said. "There's no PC [that] they have there as part of their daily job but there is an opportunity to provide them with more technology."

Microsoft already has a cheaper "deskless" option for companies that want to provide such workers access to both Exchange email and to a SharePoint portal server. The company hasn't said exactly how it will price access to the new Office Web Apps but it has said customers that want to provide certain workers only with web-based Office access will be able to do so.

"This will become a lot clearer when we finalise our packaging," Capossela said.

In the time that Microsoft has been building Office 14, cost-sensitivity has increased as the economy has deteriorated. Although Capossela said Microsoft is still building the same product it set out to, he acknowledged the company has changed its messaging somewhat.

"We change the way we talk to customers to be much more focused on how we can take costs out," he said. But, at the same time, Capossela said that businesses want to hear about more than just ways to save.

"I do think that beyond the cost savings there is a thirst for the new styles of productivity that take into account collaboration," he said. Many businesses see the amount of time and energy workers put into social networking and personal blogs.

"A lot of IT people see that energy going outside of the business space," Capossela said. "How do you actually put that into more of a business context?"