Google’s Exchange Killer
pete | June 24, 2008Listeners to the show will know I’m a bit of a Google fan. I wouldn’t go so far as to say fanboy, there are many things about the Goog’ i find frustrating, and possibly terrifying. But as a Mac user, I’ve been fascinated by the Goog’s tremendous growth, and as them being the only game in town big enough to take down Microsoft.
One thing I’ve been obsessed about recently is the idea that Google could use its Apps suite of Email, Docs, Address Book Syncing and the like and form a kind of Exchange Killer that would be easy to set up, and compatible with multiple devices and operating systems.
Well, today that idea seems closer to reality as The NSW Department of Education announced they will be moving from Exchange to Google Apps, through their partner SMS.
One argument i always hear against the idea of Google Apps replacing Microsoft Exchange is that large companies will never go for a set up they can’t monitor ‘in house’. I’m sure larger companies would be reluctant to change to a hosted system, and some never will, but todays decision is a vote of confidence that atleast some sectors will think about making the switch.
Have i completed missed the point here? Microsoft Exchangers, what are your thoughts?
We need to put the latest announcement from nsw.edu in
drworm | June 25, 2008We need to put the latest announcement from nsw.edu in perspective. Basically they’re migrating all the student email accounts to Google, but all the teacher accounts - and presumably staff accounts - remain on a corporate email system. I can see why they would want to move to Google, email accounts for 100,000s of students on an enterprise email system would cost an absolute buddle. So for nsw.edu, who has a requirement to serve a huge number of non data sensitive email accounts, a gmail solution provides a strong value proposition.
For medium-large corporates to migrated their staff onto Gmail or Google Apps is going to take a bit more doing.