Google Apps Growing Fast
March 3rd, 2008 Benjamin HorstJoe Panettieri, of Seeking Alpha, writes “Is Google Apps the Next Microsoft Office?”
He sees universities adopting Gmail as their hosted email platform, Google Talk for instant messaging, and now, Google Docs is beginning to gain traction among students and faculty as well.
“Over the past year, Google’s Gmail has become Hofstra’s mainstay email platform for students and alumni. On average, according to Juckiewicz, roughly 8,700 students out of 13,000 students regularly use the Google Apps system. While Google Docs is beginning to gain traction across Hofstra, students are also using Google Talk for live chat and instant messaging and Google Calendar to share class schedules.”
Panettieri sees Google Apps threatening the Microsoft Office juggernaut in a few years. It will chip away that application’s dominance from below, taking away the simpler jobs–but also defining and dominating a new market, for intensely collaborative needs that span small teams across the planet.
“Assuming the offline capabilities arrive this year and work as advertised, Google Apps will become at least a partial replacement to Microsoft Office over the next two to four years, predicts a Texas college CIO, who requested anonymity.”