No Silver Lining

From Preston Galla at PC World:

As Computerworld notes in “Google Apps still trying to win over corporate users,” Google has made hardly any money on its Google Apps Premium Edition (GAPE) since its launch, while Microsoft has continued to rake in billions. Here’s what the article says:

Since launching GAPE in February 2007, Google has earned $4 million compared with $12.2 billion for Microsoft’s Office, according to Gartner. Google won’t clarify its number of paid users other than to say it has “hundreds of thousands.”

In fact, Google Apps isn’t even as popular as the free OpenOffice.org. In “Study: OpenOffice five times more popular than Google Docs,” Eric Lai cites a study last month from market research firm ClickStream Technologies PLC which found that 51% of U.S. Internet users over age 18 use Microsoft Office, while 5% use OpenOffice.org, and only 1% use Google Docs.

I’ve been using OpenOffice for years and love it. Google needs to add big shoulders to its Docs if it plans to compete. At this point, I find their apps unusable for all but the simplest things.

From the Web 2.0 Journal’s Cloud Computing News Desk:

“This year cloud computing made the leap from an interesting proposition to a viable option for even the largest of enterprises. In 2009 it becomes mandatory,” said Appirio co-founder, Narinder Singh. “Today’s economic climate will force enterprises to pick technology winners and losers for their environment in order to cut costs, be more efficient and deliver business-relevant innovation. Cloud computing makes this seemingly impossible task a possibility – much more so than with traditional software. This is why we believe cloud computing will be counter cyclical, with SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) investment accelerating, and traditional software spending declining.”

Mr. Singh has an axe to grind:

In 2009, the market will start to hear about more and more companies going completely server-less. While this is already happening at smaller companies, larger and larger companies will optimize their business processes and cut IT expenses by outsourcing to cloud providers.

I also notice his optimism doesn’t include malware and cut cables:

A seabed earthquake or trawler net are believed to be responsible for damaging three fibreoptic cables, leaving at least 15 countries with slow or no internet access and poor-quality telephone lines.

A team of specialist engineers, aided by an underwater robot nicknamed Hector, are working on the problem, which they hope will be fixed by Thursday.

The cables, which carry more than 75 per cent of all communication traffic between Europe and the Middle East, were broken last week.

It is the second time this year that trans-Mediterranean cables to Europe have been severed. The earlier cut, in late January, was apparently caused by a ship’s anchor.

BTW, I also have an axe to grind. I write custom apps for brick and mortar companies.

Of course, if the insufferable Larry Ellison of Oracle agrees with me, I’m probably wrong:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” Ellison said in one of his legendary rants at Oracle OpenWorld in September. ”I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

Tim O’Brien, Microsoft’s senior director of the platform strategy group, acknowledged that cloud computing really isn’t that different from earlier technology trends involving hosted services. “There’s a joke about how we had cloud computing since the 1960s and it was called the mainframe,” O’Brien said. “There’s some truth to that.”…

David Berlind, an editor at Information Week who chaired the panel, said some technologists believe that the traditional approach of owning and managing software and hardware is cheaper in the long run. But he said IT costs can be unpredictable and hard to calculate and that there is a big advantage to making it become “someone else’s problem.”

From ComputerWorld:

Cloud computing is being over-hyped, and enterprises should be wary after high-profile outages at providers such as Amazon cloud services, said analyst firm Ovum…

“A spate of service outages on the Amazon and Google platforms has increased enterprise caution about the reliability of consumer-market-oriented cloud providers.”

Did I mention the fragility of the power grid? And just how much better is it in the third world country providing your cloud-based service?

From Cathy Zoi at MIT’s Technology Review:

The current U.S. system for transmitting and distributing electricity is in critical need of an upgrade. It is old, balkanized, and too limited in its reach. Grid-related power outages and problems with power quality reportedly cost the nation $80 billion to $188 billion per year. And areas rich in renewable resources–like solar, wind, and geothermal energy–currently have no “highway” to move the power they generate to the markets where it is needed.

From Sify:

The city has been facing a daily shortage of 600-700 megawatts (MW). To ensure that the city receives continuous supply, the utilities have to procure power at as much as Rs10-12 per unit from sources outside Mumbai. However, the Tata Power Company (TPC), which is the bulk supplier in Mumbai, sells power at Rs4.50 per unit.