Google Adds Offline Functionality for Documents, and What it Means to IT

Google Documents & Spreadsheets, the productivity component of the Google Apps online software suite, can now be taken offline, in yet another sign that the company means business (for businesses).

The addition of an offline mode addresses what has long been a criticism of IT people who have shunned the application as nothing more than the fantasy of a consumerist in the enterprise. If workers are stuck on a plane, or anywhere else without online access for that matter, for example, how will they get work done?

Using Google Gears, which the company opened last year to developers to solve the offline problem, the issue seems to have been addressed. While Google Apps, online or off, lacks the "rich functionality" of something like Microsoft Office, the majority of users, at least anecdotally, never see much past the basic buttons in Word and Excel.

But this is just as much a battle of hearts and minds as it is technology itself, and many IT departments seem to prefer something with upkeep. In our annual consumer IT survey, nearly 54 percent of the 311 IT decision makers surveyed said that a suite like Google Apps is not appropriate for enterprise use.

One argument, they contended, is the security element of not storing data on site. But for most run-of-the-mill businesses, it's hard to say whether their servers could be any more locked down than Google's, and whether their uptime is at all better. Part of it is no doubt psychological – if you can see a server, or have someone who works for you see it, then you're in control of your destiny.

But security and rich functionality might just be what they mention at the surface. The underlying issue might be that Google Docs requires so little IT involvement that it runs the risk of marginalizing its role. For $50 per user per year, any line of business head with a corporate credit card could purchase an enterprise version of the suite to help his employees edit everything in real time, rather than, say, sending around reply-all e-mails, or if they find the check-in, check-out process of Office Live to be too cumbersome.

When we did a story about Google Sites, a new feature to Google Apps that allows users to create a corporate intranet with no programming experience, Google noted that wasn’t trying to marginalize IT's role, but analysts felt otherwise.

It doesn’t have to be this way. IT could view Google Apps as a good thing, and focus its attention on other productivity issues that require a technologist in the enterprise.
But, of course, whether they will depends on the leader, and the company.

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Mon, Apr 7, 2008 13:28 EDT

Google Apps

Posted by: Anonymous
Rating:

Google Apps has a long ways to go before it's business ready. They are missing the some key features including templates and document management. I think you are giving Google a lot more credit than they deserve. What about Macros, and Clippy?

Reply to this comment | Post new comment | Report as spam

Mon, Apr 28, 2008 10:51 EDT

Many missing capabilities necessary for corporate adoption

Posted by: Rachael
Rating:

What about the ability to: index, search, reference, share, archive, de-duplicate, version, and backup? These documents are corporate assets which do not belong to an individual, but legally are the responsibility of the entire corporation, certainly they don't belong in the public domain. I'm not saying that this is a public domain model, but how to share with only other members of the corporation (we're talking 1000's of people, not dozens)?

Tue, Apr 29, 2008 12:55 EDT

In-House IT Needs to Deliver More Value

Posted by: Michael Hugos
Rating:

Hi Rachael,

I hear you on this and I hear the concerns expressed by Anonymous above. And at the same time we need to move on and find more valuable contributions to make for the companies we work for. The care and feeding of basic systems such as email, intranets, and office productivity apps are no longer rocket science and they are done real well now by outsourced providers like Google and others.

We in the IT profession have spent the last 30 years learning to get good at running these kind of systems and at keeping data centers up 24/7 and protecting our data and all that. And what does it get us? It gets us taken for granted...

People expect those things to run smoothly now just like they expect dialtone when they pick up their phone and electric current when they plug in their appliance. I'm not saying it's easy to do these things; but these things have become commodity services just like providing phone service and electric power. Central phone and power utilities do that and IT utilities are fast taking over the jobs of running data centers and providing basic email, intranets, and office productivity apps.

People who see doing those jobs as their most valuable skills need to get a job with one of the IT utility companies (those kind of companies do value such skills because that's how they make their money). IT professionals who want to stay in other kinds of companies need to develop skills that enable them to deliver services that companies now want from IT.

What companies now want from IT is the systems support they need to be agile. Companies are under a lot of pressure and they need to respond quickly to new opportunities to make money. We are all scrambling in this global economy and we all need to pull together. The days are quickly coming to an end when the rest of a conmpany will put up with IT staff excuses and objections and reasons why things can't be done. Figure it out and move on. Hello brave new world... :)

Best regards,
Michael

Thu, May 1, 2008 10:04 EDT

Michael,

I think you have missed my point. I agree with your comments that our industry is changing and that we need to support our client base. In order to manage the change, I need real answers to my questions.

My question was actually a technical one, with a technical answer: Can these applications help my company deal with issues related to managing the information stored in our company's document assets?

These assets must be secure, but searchable and shared across a company which has offices around the world. People come and go from our firm, and they must have access to our assets when they work for us, and cannot have access if they don't.

How do we get 1000's of people access to these docs and maintain security as people come and go?
How do we prevent duplication of information?

This is not a theoretical excercise, I need to answer these any many other questions as my colleagues begin to use these tools and our corporate assets are posted on the internet in a repository that I cannot index, archive or backup.

Rachael

Google Adds Offline Functionality for Documents, and What it Means to IT

Topic: Applications

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