Google Enterprise Apps: Another Alternative to Microsoft Office?

Google Nigeria sent me a letter yesterday, introducing one of their products called – Google Enterprise Apps for Business.

This app is meant to bring simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to Nigerian Business organizations of any size hosted by google. Thereby streamlining setup, minimizing maintenance, and reducing IT costs.

Their collaborative suite of products included:

• Gmail: comes with 25 GB storage per user to let you keep and find everything with customized email domains (e.g. name@mybusiness.com).
• Talk: Business class instant messaging and video-conferencing.
• Groups: Lets employees easily create and work in teams.
• Calendars: Makes scheduling meetings and sharing calendars easy.
• Docs: Allows simultaneous collaboration on documents in real-time, keeping versions organized and available wherever and whenever users work with word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools.
• Sites: allows employees to quickly create intranet or project sites.
• Google Video: Communicate to large groups of people via video.
• Postini: Email security, compliance and archiving.

 

Google-Nigeria’s Business Development Manager, Lola Masha stated the benefits of switching from Microsoft Office Suite to Google Enterprise Apps, which includes:

• Cost Savings: Save at 50% on email licensing and support costs.
• Storage: 25 GB of email storage.
• Implementation: ability to implement Google Apps within hours at low costs. No hardware (servers) or software licensing costs.
• Built-in back-up and disaster recovery across geographical datacenters.
• 99.9% up-time guarantee, with ability to access your email information and documents anywhere.

Further details about this new app can be found on their website at google.com/a.

But the question is, will Google Enterprise Apps replace Microsoft Offices here in Nigeria? Your comments are highly valued in the comment box below.